Lukashenko appoints new heads of Belarus’ central mass media

The head of state appoint­ed new heads of the Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny and the SB. Belarus Segod­nya news­pa­per. These are Ivan Eis­mont and Dmit­ry Zhuk respec­tive­ly. The head of state also approved the appoint­ment of Igor Lut­sky as the direc­tor gen­er­al of the STV chan­nel.

“In fact, thou­sands of per­son­nel deci­sions have been made in this room. But I feel rather uncom­fort­able today. Often I have to replace peo­ple because they do not cope with their work. Some­times they are trans­ferred to oth­er jobs. But you will replace very good heads of mass media out­lets Davy­d­ko, Yakubovich, and Koziy­atko. They are great peo­ple, and we can­not lose con­tact with them,” Alexan­der Lukashenko said.

The head of state not­ed that Gen­nady Davy­d­ko is the head of the pub­lic asso­ci­a­tion Belaya Rus. “By the way, it is a self-suf­fi­cient pub­lic asso­ci­a­tion, as far as I know. They have enough mem­ber­ship fees to sup­port them­selves and to engage in large char­i­ta­ble work. There­fore, elect­ing Gen­nady Davy­d­ko its chair­man is prob­a­bly a step in the right direc­tion. He is a wor­thy Belaru­sian. He has per­fect­ed him­self for 20 years of our inde­pen­dence. Gen­nady Davy­d­ko, there­fore, chose the right path to fol­low,” the Belaru­sian leader said.

With regard to Pavel Yakubovich, the pres­i­dent urged not to lose sight of him. “He is in charge of a great piece of work (was elect­ed chair­man of the pub­lic coun­cil under the Inte­ri­or Min­istry – note by BelTA). This work should be stepped up. This is some­thing akin to the over­sight of the law enforce­ment agen­cies. It was good that the coun­cil was not my ini­tia­tive but that of police­men them­selves. Well done!” the head of state not­ed.

Alexan­der Lukashenko believes that the func­tions of the pub­lic coun­cil should be expand­ed. “Per­haps, it even needs more staff to become a pub­lic coun­cil with the super­vis­ing func­tions between the pub­lic and the law-enforce­ment agen­cies, and, maybe, super­vis­ing func­tions over the law-enforce­ment bod­ies,” he said.

“This means Pavel Yakubovich will have enough work to do. Both Pavel Yakubovich and Gen­nady Davy­d­ko need to stay in the mass media sec­tor and coop­er­ate with them. As for Gen­nady Davy­d­ko, I think his sta­tus needs to be raised. We need to con­sid­er a pro­pos­al of appoint­ing him sen­a­tor in the Coun­cil of the Repub­lic. This will make his posi­tions stronger. Pavel Yakubovich also can work there. We need expe­ri­enced peo­ple, the peo­ple who went through the water­shed peri­od in our his­to­ry from the Sovi­et Union to inde­pen­dent Belarus, the peo­ple who know every­thing about that peri­od and under­stand the changes which took place,” the pres­i­dent said.