The head of the United Transitional Cabinet, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, named three mistakes made by the democratic forces over the past five years during hearings at the Coordinating Council. She was responding to a question from Aliaksandr Parshankou of the Nasha Sprava faction.
“I will not name any major political mistakes, because we were working in a very constrained environment, and no one ever knows what will turn out to be a mistake and what will not unless you try,” she said.
Speaking about initiatives, she cited the “Peramoga Plan,” which, she said, carried “very high expectations that were not met.”
“Perhaps this was either a political mistake or even a broader societal one — that we may not have done enough work with Lithuanian society. We all assumed that Lithuanians knew everything, understood everything, and that the narratives promoted by some parliamentarians and amplified by propaganda narratives would not work. But they worked all this time.
And these ‘Litvinisms’ and ‘Pahonia’ became a reason for Lithuanians in Lithuania to start viewing Belarusians somewhat negatively. We, of course, tried at the time to correct this, held numerous round tables and consultations, and spoke publicly in the media. But we did not have enough resources to counter this large propaganda machine,” the politician acknowledged.
“And perhaps the third mistake, for which political structures may not even be responsible, is that in our civic movement some discussions turn into public, excuse my language, ‘shitstorms’.
This has a very strong impact on the overall mood, and more attention becomes focused on minor conflicts between organizations or individuals, and we lose focus. And, of course, I would very much like us not to lose sight of our goal and to concentrate our energy not on disputes but on work,” the head of the United Transitional Cabinet concluded.
