For the second year, “yellow vests” in France, every Saturday, their legal day off, are celebrated with massive protests on the streets of French cities.
They are massively against everything that the last president of the Fifth Republic, Emmanuel Macron, is doing in France.
Following the example of the “yellow vests” in Minsk and some other Belarusian cities after the presidential elections in August for the eighth week on weekends, supporters of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who disagree with their loss, have been buzzing with disagreements with their loss, who gained a little more than 10% in the protest vote.
The semantic difference between her and Macron is not so great, but Macron won in the second round, but this Belarusian miracle of populism is not.
And of course, the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, who had the audacity to win in the first round with 80%, is personally to blame for this.
Here you can talk a lot about the nuances and peculiarities of the political regime and the originality of electoral procedures in a particular country, but there is no doubt that Lukashenka won these elections.
However, this does not prevent a certain number of Western countries from recognizing either the elections or Lukashenka himself as the president of this beautiful country.
So it’s not the first time Old Man is all this, and the usual status of “the last dictator of Europe” has returned, just as it has not gone anywhere.
Last week the inauguration finally took place - Lukashenka took office as president for the sixth time in a row.
Here, of course, there are questions too, who more than once in a row.
German Chancellor Frau Merkel has been Chancellor for only 15 years in a row, and Lukashenko is already 26 - European record holder!
True, it is already clear to everyone that the tin Angela is sitting out her term - and then planting tomatoes at the dacha.
Emmanuel Macron, in the summer, marked only the first three years as President of France.
Almost two of them invigorate the young populist president with weekly yellow vests protests.
It should be noted here that Macron does not really stand on ceremony with Protestants, and during these 22 months he has a lot of broken eyes, broken arms - and even death.
True, no one particularly scolds the frantic Emmanuel about the harsh attitude towards Protestants.
But he is not going to resign.
Conscience does not torment him.
Once I happened to be in France in May 2017 with expert observation of the first round of the presidential elections.
The campaign itself was surprisingly technological and populist.
For the first time in Europe, yesterday, an almost invisible minister and administrator, almost unknown to anyone, and the day before yesterday, a bank clerk suddenly jumped out like a devil out of a snuffbox with a new movement and beat all the old classic games of the Fifth Republic.
But that was not the most striking impression on me.
After the closure of the polling stations, as the counting of votes began and all TV channels began to intensively pump the viewers with the desired result, left-wing students gathered in Paris on the Place de la Bastille.
They didn't ask for anything special - they just followed the count.
So after 15 minutes, the entire Parisian OMON riot police beat up these youth with clubs and gassed them on the air.
It was such a demonstrative prevention for the doubters.
No one then exclaimed: “They are children!”, No one went to “defend democracy”.
A year later, this resulted in the movement of "yellow vests", which gradually spread to other EU countries following Macron's ambitions to take the place of the informal leader of Europe to replace the outgoing Angela Merkel.
Today, this same Macron suddenly, after a telephone conversation with President Putin about the fate of Belarus, got ready for a working visit to Lithuania.
For a meeting with the "straw president" S. Tikhanovskaya, I suppose.
And before that, he publicly called on Alexander Lukashenko to resign.
I would even say, I pointed out to the president of sovereign Belarus what he should do immediately.
Here many experts, and even President Lukashenko himself asked the question: why should Macron not go where he encourages the President of Belarus to go?
He has 20 and a half months more reasons for the same logic!
But these are, of course, rhetorical questions.
In general, it is curious to see how, despite the fact that Merkel will soon leave the post of German Chancellor, there is such an intense struggle for the informal throne of the all-European Fuhrer.
Merkel is trying to maintain her status, having up her sleeve a project of a continental energy hub (here in the Nord Streams ect.), Having bought Navalny's theme at Novichok, and Macron, who may now have the Belarusian issue and even the Karabakh settlement in his asset.
And this is all, of course, partly because the United States is not up to Europe today - it is burning up there.
A month and a half later, Trump's fateful election for the United States.
Then, of course, in the European china shop they will want to do the housework with the appropriate result.
Here we must admit that all these questions are somehow ours and frankly there is nothing to do here for the western terrarium of like-minded people.
There is no one except us to save the Belarusian statehood and establish a lasting peace in the Transcaucasus.
Another thing is that, apparently, it is worth clearly formulating for ourselves why we are doing this and what then.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.