Journalist: I Look Forward To Day When Borscht Lover Attempts To Get Through Border

• 21.11.2019, 14:41

Truth will out.

Bolivia is in trend. The exotic mountainous country has pitched out an awesome story to the faded Belarusians, BelGazeta journalist Iryna Rabetskaya writes.

The head of the country, Evo Morales, was caught on fraud during the elections, people resented and took to the streets, the president resigned and left the country. It's a little strange to read this, isn't it?

By the way, did you know that baked guinea pigs are the national cuisine in Bolivia? The population there has long domesticked them for food, just in case. They also knit lam-alpac wool clothes with colorful national ornaments and wear them all. Indians from different tribes, wearing knitted hats and traditional funny hats, living on the edge of the world - right by the sky, in the Andes, where water boils at 800C, eating guinea pigs, grazing llamas, chewing coca leaves and appreciating their authenticity, turned around and said "no" to the president, who wanted illegally to climb on their necks for a fourth term.

Can you imagine? They considered what he was going to do fraudulent! They were offended that he had deceived them! They went out to protest, whole towns and villages. Whole villagers! And the Bolivian riot police and the army - local multi-lingual Indian people, too - took the side of the truth and flatly refused to suppress the protests of their fellow citizens.

Jealous? And what about the main Indian? Did he wheeled out paddy wagons and water cannons? Did he call the neighbors to help? No. He just left. Flew to Mexico, which showed understanding and agreed to receive. He did not cling to power with his teeth, he did not ask for help in exchange for lithium and other rare earth deposits. He did not dare to seduce his law enforcers with superpensions and indulgence for everything. Didn't it occur to him? Was he in a stupor? Well, sure, he is not a historian, even not a high school graduate... Or is there oxygen starvation in the highlands? Iodine deficiency? Didn't they get the television through?

Or maybe he just became ashamed? What if he still has the notion of conscience and honor? He knew that he had definitely outstayed, grown stiff, couldn't pretend even to himself, so he aborted middeal so easily? Didn't start to aggravate the situation up to the bloodshed? Felt pity for his spontaneous and sincere people? Did not dare to get finally bronzed? Agreed to give a chance to others? Overcame the shameful thirst for power and decided to quit?

Maybe I'm naive, but as a whole, to me it looks like that. The people and the country have the right to choose. Life is too short to be stupidly rolling on the same track and not to try to make at least a small step towards a happier future. So viva, Morales! It may still be great in your country, and you are to be respected for not literally taking away the desire for change from your countrymen.

...Here we live in the so-called heart of Europe, we honor the rights of guinea pigs, consider ourselves a super enlightened IT nation - they say, no match for some Aymara Indians. But we have been quite comfortably coexisting with the dullest obscurantism for many long years. Somehow we manage to forget about the rights given to us from the birth - including the right to a legal change of power that does not suit us at all its levels. We do not want to know that the state and all of its, God forgive, organs - all this was originally intended for us, for our happy life, by the way. We close our eyes to the arrogant manipulation of the law, endless redrafting of the Constitution and the Electoral Code. We accept the non-transparency of the elections and the impossibility to control their results - this topic has long been "closed", as ordered from above, by the irremovable CEC, to which everything is just dew from the sky. Which dares to say that the ballot boxes which can be seen through are not "fashionable", and we are not even laughing at this impudent distorting of the essence of a fair election process.

We have been pretending for years that all this is trifles that do not affect our "basic" values - well, there is a family or a pathetic career in government agencies. Many people don't go to the election anymore, they say, nothing will change anyway...

Meanwhile, life is slowly passing by - if you haven't joined the BRSM, if you haven't caved in to it and become a wood louse, or if you didn't get engaged in self-realization in the civilized world in time, you won't have any particular chance here... It seems that it is possible to open a business, but a small enterprise is not a competitor to the power-bound corporations. Theoretically, it is possible to "serve until getting a good position" honestly - but in practice, appointments are made in an alternate arrangement. And the main thing is that everybody knows it here, but, ah, it's just the way things are, and we don't sweat it or regret it, forget it and move on...

A question to philosophers: why is that?! Why are we like this? No, I don't urge anyone to do anything. I'm just wondering, within the bounds of the law. I have some questions, sorry. Perhaps they are purely rhetorical. Why are we all satisfied with this stinking swamp, this general lack of initiative and indifference to the future of the country? Why do we not care about our own dignity? Why are we not a nation? In what egg and on what oak is our national, and even human, pride, if we use it so rarely? Or is such a flexible position represents the highest point of evolution of the Belarusian people?

It is a shame, citizens of Belarus! Do you disagree? Halloo!

P.S. However, one should believe in the best - life sometimes brings notorious surprises. Protracted tragedies sometimes turn into not even a farce, but a screamingly funny anecdote. I look forward to the day when a certain borscht lover, wearing, like the Bolivian head of the CEC, a man's outfit, will try to leak through the border unrecognized. That will be laughter! And I'm sorry, I won't feel any compassion if the road is blocked by truly competent authorities capable of dealing with it thoroughly and honestly. How do they say? You have over-salted the porridge yourself, and you have to eat it up. Truth, no matter how you hide it, will come out. And there are always loose ends from any weave. It is not mine. It's from people's experience. From the one of Aymara Indians.