“But we really understand that if we had that kind of money, then surely he would not have fought for some rights of the common people” - this is a quote from a man whom the opposition forces of a rather large Eastern European country consider the winner of the presidential elections.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said them even before she was turned into a protest leader and her face adorned the editorials of world newspapers.
Then the house of her family was searched and allegedly found $ 900 thousand of unknown origin.
This is a rare case when a politician out loud indicates how much he estimates his struggle for the rights of the people.
A phrase that would destroy any other European candidate once and for all.
Let's make a reservation right away: I have nothing against Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
She can be a wonderful woman.
She graduated from high school with a gold medal.
She worked as a translator for charitable organizations.
She is, after all, a mother of two.
Most likely, she wants good for her country.
The problem is that this is where all our knowledge about Tikhanovskaya-man ends.
What we see on the Internet is purely a function, a political technology golem.
Or, as they say now, a spoiler.
We are witnessing a completely unique situation where a number of people agreed that the spoiler won the election, and play the king with an empty throne.
We all remember Juan Guaido, who was "elected" by external forces as president of Venezuela in opposition to the "dictator" Maduro.
But Guaido at least had an understandable political biography, a position on a number of issues, a list of victories and defeats.
You could somehow relate yourself to him.
Tikhanovskaya has nothing.
There is a fictitious image of “a brave woman opposing a dictator,” but this image does not hold on to her and falls in the slightest light wind.
In fact, the first serious political step of Tikhanovskaya was flight - she fled to Lithuania, after reading a video message from a piece of paper, where she stated that she was just a housewife, just a mother and did not want to fight (in fact, the same $ 900 thousand in a different way).
Once in Lithuania, Svetlana began to write down regular addresses to the Belarusian people - already of a completely different kind.
But she still reads them from an invisible piece of paper with the same intonation of a diligent girl-medalist.
There is a feeling that whoever wrote these cheat sheets to her, he tries in every possible way so that they do not have a single word of her own and that the very simplicity, which is worse than theft, never breaks into the air again.
And it also seems that replacing her with any random person from the street will come out at least as good.
Four days ago, she was not worried about either Putin, or even his promises of help to Lukashenko.
Now he suddenly began to worry.
She promised not to engage in politics before leaving - and immediately took up her on arrival in Lithuania.
(However, this is rather a trend. Hello, Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky!) Now she will speak before the UN, as another diligent student did, voicing texts written by others.
Remember, there was such a Greta Thunberg?
And while the adult uncles at the top do not decide what to do with Belarus and which policy to choose, their avatar, the housewife Tikhanovskaya, will be weathervaned and she will read more and more mutually exclusive paragraphs from the sheet.
Amazingly, this is what they are trying to sell us now as an image of a strong, independent woman who challenged the regime.
And then, most likely, she will be forgotten.
Once again: remember, there was such a Greta Thunberg?
The sadness is that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is not a little monster with a lack of empathy (nothing personal, this is a characteristic of Thunberg's disease).
She is really a simple woman, whom the whirlwind of events has brought to absolutely not her place, to those heights where, most likely, she is uncomfortable and scared.
And where does she first of all want to wish to return to earth without great losses.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.