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Kastusyow challenges «pro-Russian candidates» to TV debate

 

Ryhor Kastusyow, the Belarusian Popular Front's presidential candidate, has called Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Andrey Sannikaw and Uladzimir Nyaklyayew pro-Russian candidates and challenged them to a televised debate, BelaPAN said.

"I'm ready for the one-on-three format," Mr. Kastusyow said in his address to voters broadcast live by Belarusian Television (Channel One) on Wednewday evening.

He branded Mr. Nyaklyayew a songwriter who had once written odes to the Young Communist League (Komsomol) and Mr. Sannikaw a former diplomat whose statements about relations with Moscow made no sense.

The Belarusian Popular Front, on the other hand, is oriented toward Europe, Mr. Kastusyow said. The European Union has provided €100 billion to Greece and €90 billion to Ireland to bail them out of the financial crisis, while Russia has provided $50 billion to support the "Belarusian dictatorship," he said. To repay his debt, Alyaksandr Lukashenka will visit Moscow later this month to sign agreements governing the common economic zone of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia and the use of the Belarusian-Russian Regional Group of Forces, he said.

If the current government remained in power, the population of Belarus would drastically decrease and its territory would come to be dominated by roads, railroads and foreign military bases, Mr. Kastusyow said. All this infrastructure would be maintained by a small number of people, possibly Chinese, and "our children and grandchildren would be studying the Chinese language," he said.

Mr. Kastusyow said that his government would return the bank deposits lost by individuals after the collapse of the Soviet Union, provide free apartments or houses to families with three or more children, properly investigate high-profile disappearances, restore the abolished benefits and privileges for pensioners and students and withdraw from a union state with Russia. Mr. Kastusyow claimed that corrupt officials used the union state's funds to build luxury houses in Moscow.

Mr. Kastusyow said that Alyaksandr Lukashenka looked "not like the president of an independent state but like a representative of some Russian province" when his small son, Kolya, presented the pontiff with a primer in Russian and not in Belarusian during a meeting at the Vatican last year.