Barshcheuski: I can't allow actions of this BPF party to be projected on me

About 100 activists have left the BPF party, including such famous people as Ales Marachkin, Jury Khadyka, Vaclau Areshka, Halina Siamdzianava, Liavon Barshcheuski. What pushed the party members, and some of them have been in the party for 20 years, towards leaving it?

“The party has changed, it is no longer perceived by the society as an opposition force, as a force which really can oppose to the regime. This process has started several years ago and completed with the current party leaders”, —the ex-Chairman, and from now on the ex-member of the BPF party Liavon Barshcheuski has said live on air to Euroradio.

To Mr. Barshcheuski's opinion, Ryhor Kastusyou's participation in the election was the participation of a sparring partner with a fatal result. This was the first time when a BPF candidate had so little support, even upon the statistical data provided by independent observers, - he says.

“This is a failure, but the new leaders did not discuss it, did not evaluate it in any way. I waited for an evaluation, I hoped there would be one. I expected there would be strict conclusions, an analysis of the mistakes, which started after the BPF party had in fact transferred under the leadership of Aliaksandr Milinkevich and his team”, — Barshcheuski added.

Liavon Barshcheuski thinks it is not worth it to conduct some internal turnovers, to organize a Fronde and to try to change the directive board in the conditions when the party is under control of "people from the outside":

“Any structural work was cut down immediately. Naturally, expel of the most perspective young people from the party became the last straw. I am speaking about Franak Viachorka, Anton Koipish and some other people. It turns out that the party leaders decided to keep the power and not to admit anyone who was cleverer and more perspective then themselves to come closer to this power. But the biggest failure is denial of intellect! Denial of the intelligent party environment!”

According to Mr. Barshcheuski, the BPF party was famous for its intellect, however, the intellectuals who failed to support the policy of the current leaders have gone. It is very likely (and another ex-member of the BPF party Vaclau Areshka has also said this) that they will establish a new party, based on the old values of the "Belarusian Popular Front".

Liavon Barshcheuski: “Probably, I won't join any party so far, as I need to think all this over. There is enough work, enough Belarusian-oriented work. However, I can't allow the actions of this BPF party to be projected on me, I totally disagree with what has been done before the presidential election, after the presidential election, with the behaviour of the candidate Ryhor Kastusyou. This is not my spirit, not my style and not the party which was created in the late 80s - early 90s”.

Barshcheuski is convinced that the current situation in the BPF party can be called a "conflict of values". The politician has said the following about the values that have been lost within the last several years:

“In the first place, this is perception of Belarus as a perspective country, a country with a future, not a country-farmstead-of-Europe. A country leaded by intelligence and intellect, not by empty slogans based on nothing. Our independence can be built only on the basis of intellect. And the intellect was in fact expelled from the party”, — Liavon Barshcheuski has summarized.

Photo by: www.svaboda.org