We Can Save Belarus Only By Removing High Traitor From Power

Independence is like oil.

Successful modern states are maintained for the taxes on income and property of their citizens. The authorities there are doing their best to ensure that these incomes and property grow as much as possible.

They create conditions for the development of private initiative, stimulate the growth of salaries. They maintain a high level of education and healthcare - well-educated and healthy citizens earn better money. And pay more taxes.

Taxpayers strictly monitor what on, how and by whom their money is spent. They will not allow to administer their money to those whom they did not elect in fair elections. But even honestly elected politicians will lose power ahead of schedule if they are caught on financial or moral dishonesty.

The state power in prosperous countries serves the ones who elected and maintains it - the people.

But there are other states that exist mainly due to the exploitation of natural resources. Here, politicians in power have the opportunity to take control of revenues from the extraction of natural resources, and use them to maintain appropriate uncontrolled power.

With the money from the sale of resources given by nature, such rulers establish numerous law-enforcing and bureaucratic structures personally loyal to them. The judicial, political, electoral systems, and the media are changing to serve the only goal - the indefinite preservation of the ruler’s power. His opponents are being persecuted. And he and his close associates are enriched by corruption and theft.

Big business is taken under control. Medium, and small businesses become some sort of a feedbox for the siloviki and smaller officials. Active people leave the country. The development of the economy stops.

Of course, some of the income from natural resources falls to the people. But, by and large, the government sees ordinary people as extra mouths, a burden.

There are a lot of countries whose natural wealth has become an instrument for enslavement, slowing down any development. But there is one country that got enslaved by using other people's resources. This is Belarus.

Elected 26 years ago, the then legitimate president did not have enough natural resources within the country to secure uncontrolled and unlimited power over the people. But there was Russia nearby, which had enough of these resources. Russia did not come to terms with the independence of the former Soviet republics, considering them its outskirts.

Lukashenka used this nostalgia for the former empire as a way of obtaining resources for asserting unlimited power over the people. He began to sell the sovereignty of our country in parts, to Moscow. Russia paid for a phased increase of its control over Belarus with cheap oil and gas. Which were processed and sold in world markets at high prices.

In fact, the country's independence has become a selling resource. Like oil, for example.

The proceeds from the sale of independence were enough for the colossal apparatus of suppressing society, for maintaining an unreformed backward industry, for the luxurious life and foreign accounts of the dictator and his family.

But independence ends faster than natural resources. Now Moscow has decided to complete the purchase of our country. In order to force the Belarusian dictator to quickly agree to the final annexation, they began to gradually increase oil and gas prices.

Of course, Lukashenka does not want to turn into the ruler of a Russian autonomy. He is hysterical, cursing, even trying to threaten. But ... is bidding on the conditions for the absorption of Belarus.

After all, he has nowhere to go.

Personalist dictatorship is a very expensive system of government. The economy, pressed down by total control, cannot contain it. Huge freebies are needed. Which, given the lack of large deposits of oil or other natural resources, a dictator can only obtain by selling independence.

There is still an option to build a self-sufficient successful state based on a free economy, guarantees of citizens' rights, and democracy. But in such a state there is no place for dictators.

Therefore, the criminal sale of the country will continue until its completion. Belarus can be saved only by removing the high traitor from power. This is becoming a priority for patriots today.

Mikalai Statkevich, statkevich.org