Last Thursday we had yet another meeting in the student parliament – scheduled to last 5 hours! And trust me that is one boring place to be, at least as long as we are in the absolute minority.

However, this time I thought I had found something that would be so clearly imperialist and against the principals of everyone, that they would not dare say anything against it. So I brought up a resolution against the Norwegian oil company that started investing in Iraq without the approval of the central government in Baghdad – you might remember our actions last spring and fall.

However, they quickly voted against even considering saying anything about it, as it was seen as being “somethign that the student parliament shouldn’t say anything about”. Hmm, well that might even sound logical to some bureaucrats.

However, at the very same meeting, they managed to declare their support for the campaign for democratizations of Belarus – a campaign that pretends to be nonpartial and support nothing but free elections in Belarus. But in reality only supports one candidate…

Update: The Belarus16 campaign removed all references to Milinkevich on Monday, after we send out a press release…

However, if you go to the site, you’ll soon find that they define “the opposition” as everone who supports one of the candidates – Mr. Alexandr Milinkevich. He calls himself the “sole candidate” of the “united democratic opposition”. That title probably tricked most of the more progressive organizations that support the campaign to sign this – such as Nature and Youth and Youth against the EU. But what does he stand for? Well, go read his plattform yourself, in short, he wants to:

– remove price regulations

– privatize health care

– remove all restraints on the flow of capital

– lower tax revenues to 30% of the GDP

“But Belarus is not democratic at all, it’s important that we support the opposition there!,” you might say. Sure – but what about the other candidates. Just because someone calls themselves the “sole candidate” does not mean that the candidate of one of the social democratic parties or the candidate of the liberal party do not exist! Sure they’re there, and both collected the needed 100,000 signatures that one needs to have in order to be able to declare ones candidacy…

As far as I can tell, this is nothing but another attempt of an “orange revolution” – with all likelihood financed by various ideological groups in the United States and the EU. And sure enough, the EU actually gives this guy a radio station to promote his propaganda throughout Belarus:

Belarus opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich indicated in Warsaw on Wednesday that he “really regrets” the station has not started broadcasts yet as “every day counts” in the run up to the vote, Polish daily Rzeczpospolita writes. ( http://euobserver.com/9/20776)

Luckily the student parliament really doesn’t have any decision making power whatsoever…