Today Belarusian democratic forces ratified an action strategy for the next year and a half and declared about the creation of a new political movement “For Freedom.” The official launch is expected to be announced by Alaksandr Milinkevich during the Chernobyl March on 26 April.
The new entity is to unite all the major political forces that participated in the elections. Proposals for entry were given to the youth movement Zubr (Bison) and Kazulin’s Social Democratic Party Hramada.
On a personal note, I’m pretty busy this week as the semester draws to a close. Last Friday I had an opportunity to meet Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza. He shared his perspectives on the Belarusian conundrum. Especially, it was fun to learn about his experience of interviewing Lukashenko. Our president was pleonastic and expressive as always, making his point that the Russian language and culture was part of Belarusian tradition and history. Michnik reckons the major reason of Lukashenko’s integration leanings was caused by his long-standing wish to become, first, vice-president, and then the president of the new union.
And I’m also a bit dissatisfied with my schedule, because I’ll be giving a presentation on Belarus right at the start of Chernobyl March in Minsk. Whatever happens I’ll be missing the live reports from there. So I can’t promise a lot of verbiage here this week. But click on back… There is a chance that I’ll occasionally dig myself out of reams of papers and post something.