They Shoot Their Own Leg

What makes a criminal to fail in the first place?

Knowing his crime. Understanding that the rest of the people can also detect it. "A thief can't hide his guilty feeling," people say. So this time it all happened that way.

Being afraid that we would use their pseudo-elections, the authorities started to put a spoke in the wheel.

To some of us, they remembered the "warnings" issued during a completely different part of the campaign - the collection of signatures, to some of us they said that the signatures were not accurate and the date was not written in the way that the signature was written, to some of us - that there was no photocopies. But we didn't expect anything else here.

After all, the head of the CEC is still a criminal-falsifier with length of service - Yarmoshyna. Her boss - Lukashenka - is still in power. Is it possible for them to play without breaking the rules, even where it is beneficial for them? No. They are always dictated not by reason, but by fear. Fear of losing power. Fear of being held accountable for their actions.

Fear, justified and not, is their old adviser. As it was when they dispersed the tent camp in 2006, when they attacked the peaceful protest in 2010, and when they did not allow the dictator's real opponents to be elected in 2015. Now they malfunction even before the elections, right at the start. Not to let even the ghost of an alternative. There is still a fresh memory of the common people, who bristled because of the decree on parasites. And there is no ray of hope ahead. Only the people who are pissed off by the dictator's crimes.

So they shiver and play dirty tricks where they can. And, as usual, they shoot their own leg. Or do they really think that without a certificate of "candidate for deputies" I won't be able to fight the dictatorship?

Maksim Viniarski, European Belarus