Lukashenka: If you don’t like current president, election is only way to address your issue
During Tuesday’s visit to Minsk-based Horizont plant, Alyaksandr Lukashenka has made a comment on his decision to declare 2021 the Year of People’s Unity.
A day before, he signed a corresponding decree, stressing that he aimed at ‘consolidating society and uniting the Belarusian people on the basis of the ideas of the country’s sovereignty and independence’.
“I just want to say that I did not do it just to show anyone anything. Although it also makes sense, so that people understand that I am not an enemy to my own people and, above all, to myself. I want peace and concord in the country. You probably want this, too. If you do not like the current president, then the presidential election is the only way to address the issue. Only the presidential election. I say this no matter how much some might dislike it,” the press service quotes Lukashenka.
Notably, in the course of the 2020 election campaign, he promised ‘not to hold on to the presidential chair with blue fingers’.
According to the Belarusian Central Election Commission, 80.1% of voters supported Alyaksandr Lukashenka in the presidential election in August. The officials alsoclaimed that his strongest opponent Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya got only 10.12% of votes. However, on the back of announcing the results of the official exit polls, Belarusians started to take to the streets, saying that their votes were stolen.
In early December, Tsikhanouskaya who was forced out of the country soon after the vote expressed her readiness to lead Belarus during a transition period. Her team developed a concept for the new elections; programs of economic support and a draft for the constitutional reform to be held after Lukashenka’s resignation.
