Common Sense Is Running Out

Whatever a fool does, he does it wrong.

"Be silent! - One wanted to shout. - Sea Figure, stop dead! Let the athlete run, don't move, don't breathe." No, they did. The result was predictable. The Belarusian state faced a worldwide disgrace; Poland welcomed a world-class athlete to the national team. Who won this race? It does not matter. It could have been not Poland, but the Czech Republic, for example. Or Austria, or France. What matters is who always loses everything, no matter what one takes on.

If it's about elections, then the whole world goes crazy with its arrogant lies. If it is the CEC, it is Yermoshina. If it is a bridge, it collapses. If a conspiracy is uncovered, it's Feduta.

Ok, we still have Eurovision and sports. It seems difficult to fail here. The country has many good singers and even more good athletes. The main thing is not to bother. Send a decent band or a singer to Eurovision and let him sing. There was a good choice. We would have performed well, and the viewer would have given Belarus a sack full of points this year simply because the Belarusians are the main newsmakers of the year. We have respect, sympathy, receive assistance and wishes of luck. One had to try hard to close the country's access to the Eurovision Song Contest with one own hand. It seems as if they have gathered all the state ideologists together with the military teachers, locked them in a bunker for three days and said: here are the performances of all the artists in Belarus, choose the worst ones with the most disgusting song so that they would not let us go there. The ideologists obeyed the order and coped with the task brilliantly, politician-like - they make through the selection.

However, every time it ended with scandals and embarrassments even when normal singers from Belarus performed at the Eurovision. Pyotr Elfimov complained to the Department for Combating Economic Crimes about the misuse of the budgetary funds assigned for the preparation for the Eurovision because huge sums of money were spent on huge sheets, with an unidentified woman's body on stage, wriggling underneath. Azarenok Sr. joined the delegation and got a slap on the face from Philip Kirkorov. Lukashenka called an emergency meeting on the rigged votes; then the Investigative Committee looked for the lost voices day and night. However, such a degree of pan-European disgrace was hardly reachable.

This year, the Eurovision eel slipped out of hands and left the mediocrities to listen to the songs of the same mediocrities somewhere in the Lebyazhy restaurant at the Lukashenka family party. But there was still the Olympics. It would seem one can do nothing - neither to release political prisoners from prisons, nor to hold elections, nor to find out who signed letters and what telegram chats joined. It was enough just to stand still; the athletes will do everything. They will run, jump, swim and throw. It does not matter how many medals they win or whether they win them at all. Anyway, they will do it, just do not bother, do not meddle with their cop competence. But they did. They tried to deport an athlete who criticized sports officials from Tokyo on the eve of her performance. They even demanded to pay back $150. For sure, they miss the money to pay the riot police.

In 1998, there was already a Belarusian Olympic scandal in Japan. At that time, Lukashenka came to Nagano, went skiing with his entourage to the rice fields. The owner of the fields called the police. Then he managed to save his face. After all, very few people in the world knew who Lukashenka was, and secondly, no one was hurt. The Belarusian delegation paid the fine with the budget money for the ride, and the owner of the rice fields was not bloodthirsty. So the story did not make the world news. More than twenty years later, the Japanese police again came to the scene.

It is a scandal this time. if earlier people saw Lukashenka as a typical cunning man, now the whole world knows he is a talentless retired dictator with an entourage that make even the zootechnicians feel uncomfortable. The whole company is jailing people simply because they do not know how to plant grain, trees or flowers. Whatever they do, it causes either a scandal or laughter.

Krystina Tsimanouskaya will still run her distance. At the next Olympics. As part of the Belarus national team. Under the white-red-white flag. And those who ordered her forcible removal from Tokyo (and many other criminal orders) might even see her performing if, of course, there's a TV in the cell.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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