A Coup De Grace For Lukashenka

The times of empty shelves and shortages are returning.

Lukashenka has appointed a new Minister of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade. And immediately set him unsolvable tasks. For example, “to study the experience of Soviet trade and do everything to ensure that there is a range of goods on the shelves.”

Or to control everyone in trade and industry, including private traders: after all, they are “all state-owned enterprises, since they are located on the territory of our state and serve our population.”

And most importantly, to develop the so-called “formula of justice.” So that it is not like “some founders, directors and bosses walk around with pockets full of money, while the controller-cashier or loader in the warehouse lead a beggarly existence.”

However, these tasks only seem unsolvable at first glance. The experience of the same Soviet trade shows that store shelves can be filled in different ways.

Numerous punitive bodies, which have had a taste for blood in recent years, will help control the private sector. And it is much easier to make a director and a loader equally poor than to give ordinary workers the opportunity to earn more.

Another question is whether Belarusians, whom the ruler, without embarrassment, has listed as “our population”, will be delighted with such experiments? Do they want to return to the times of empty shelves and shortages? And, apparently, everything is heading in this direction.

“There is no such experience in world practice,” Lukashenka proudly announced the development of a “formula of justice”. He forgot to say, however, how the previous experiment on prices ended, which he himself predicted would have the status of “a unique operation for a market economy”.

A fresh experiment, which is not even a year old. It has already dealt a serious blow to Belarusian trade though. And such a speed of developments suggests that we can find out quite soon whether the new initiative will be the finishing shot for it.

Artsiom Sinitsyn, Solidarity

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