By Jude Josue L. Sabio

ALEXANDER Lukashenko recently exposed his refusal of a bribe money of US$ 940 million from the World Bank/IMF for him to impose a lockdown in Belarus.

A strongman, authoritarian President of Belarus for the past 20 years, Lukashenko is currently embattled by a continuing wave of political unrest following a disputed presidential elections last August where a widely contested result showed he won by a wide margin of more than 80%.

The controversial Lukashenko prominently stands as one of the few heads of state around the world who rejected the lockdown as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. He joins right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Like Bolsonaro who mocked the Covid-19 as just a “little flu,” Lukashenko mocked Covid-19 as just a “mass psychosis.” These valiant men must just be true to their authentic nature as courageous strongmen.

Lukashenko is in league with US President Trump who rejects the face mask, claiming that Covid-19 is a “hoax” as he is in a fighting mode against WHO and China. Lukashenko bravely conducted the Belarusian Victory Parade amid the pandemic, defying the WHO-imposed social distancing and with nobody wearing any face mask. For his part, in a recent controversial move, President Trump re-tweeted about the CDC admitting that only 6% or about 9,000 Americans, instead of more than 150,000, died of the coronavirus. As usual, the controversial tweet was taken down by Twitter.

But despite Lukashenko’s open, vocal and strong rebuke of the lockdown, Belarus’ Covid-19 numbers are surprisingly much lower than those of the Philippines that has imposed a China-inspired stringent protracted lockdown. In Belarus, per Wikipedia, as of 9 September 2020, a total of 73,402 confirmed cases have been reported, including 71,999 recoveries and 726 deaths. More than 1,605,000 Covid-19 tests have been conducted in Belarus as of date. It is notable to compare the lower Belarus death toll of 726 with that of the Philippines that is purportedly hovering at 2,000.

Last month, Lukashenko issued yet another controversial statement. Standing firm against the lockdown, Lukashenko assailed WHO/IMF for offering him 940 Million Dollars that he considers to be a bribe.

In an article entitled “Belarusian President: IMF & World Bank Tried To Bribe Me For ‘Lockdown,” published on September 7, 2020 in Principia Scientific International, Martin Armstrong reported that “Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said last month via Belarusian Telegraph Agency, BelTA, that World Bank and IMF offered him a bribe of US$940 million in the form of “Covid Relief Aid” and that “In exchange for US$940 million, the World Bank and IMF demanded that the President of Belarus impose “extreme lockdown on his people,” force them to wear face masks. impose very strict curfews, impose a police state and crash the economy.”

In the report, Mr. Armstrong stated that “Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko REFUSED the offer and stated that he could not accept such an offer and would put his people above the needs of the IMF and World Bank. This is NOT a conspiracy. You may research this yourself. He actually said this!”

Mr. Armstrong argued: “And if it is true for Belarus, then it is true for the rest of the world! The IMF and World Bank want to crash every major economy with the intent of buying over every nation’s infrastructure at cents on the dollar!”

In an earlier related report published on 27 July 2020 in GREATGAMEINDIA entitled “ EXPOSED: World Bank Coronavirus Aid Comes With Conditions For Imposing Extreme Lockdown, Reveals Belarus President”, it was reported that the Belarusian President has exposed that the World Bank coronavirus aid comes with conditions for imposing extreme lockdown measures, to model their coronavirus response on that of Italy and even changes in the economic policies which he refused as being “unacceptable”.

In said report, President Lukashenko at the same time, when speaking about external lending during a meeting to discuss support measures for the real economic sector on the part of the banking system, stressed that additional conditions which do not apply to the financial part are unacceptable for the country.

He is quoted as saying: “We hear the demands, for example, to model our coronavirus response on that of Italy. I do not want to see the Italian situation to repeat in Belarus. We have our own country and our own situation.”

Further, the report said that “According to the president, the World Bank has showed interest in Belarus’ coronavirus response practices”.

Unlike Belarus, the Philippines has been implementing a very protracted lockdown, starting with the extreme military-type stringent lockdown and easing slowly as the lockdown regime entered its 4th month. At present, the lockdown in a less stringent form is still in effect with the ubiquitous face mask compounded by the more ridiculous face shields all around as if we are in a huge hospital. It might not be too long before we would be walking in the streets like zombies or astronauts donning the personnel protective equipment or PPE.

In a World Bank press release from Washington on May 28, 2020, it was reported that “on April 9, the World Bank’s Board approved a Third Disaster Risk Management Development Policy Loan of US$500 million to enhance the Philippines’s disaster preparedness policies, planning, and investments for public health emergencies at the national and local government levels. The financing provided under this project will also support urgent needs created by the Covid-19 crisis.”

Based on an April 10, 2020 report of Ralf Rivas of Rappler, the funding assistance is the country's 3rd time to avail of the financing program from the World Bank and that the Philippines previously tapped the facility to reconstruct areas damaged by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013.

The World Bank Press Release also reported that “on April 23, 2020, the World Bank approved a US$100 million loan for the Philippines Covid-19 Emergency Response Project to help meet urgent healthcare needs in the wake of the pandemic and bolster the country’s public health preparedness.”

Based on reports, the Philippines was able to secure an additional funding from the World Bank, making its overall loan during the pandemic in the total amount of US$1.2 billion.

The much-touted “bright” Finance Secretary Dominguez must have worked prior to or early into the pandemic to “produce money at all cost” given that the President urged him about the urgent need for “cold cash”. As usual with past governments, Secretary Dominguez was inclined to resort to the traditional and easy mode of producing money through external borrowing from the World Bank/IMF.

In the middle of April, he inked the agreement with WB Acting Country Director Achim Fock for the US$P500 million loan payable in 29 years with a grace period of 10.5 years.

Based on what we know now about the controversial expose of Belarusian President Lukashenko, we are able to reconstruct how the much-hated lockdown in our country may have come about. For sure, it is safe to say that the “bright” Secretary Dominguez must have fallen an easy prey to the money power of the World Bank/IMF in a desperate bid to “produce money at all cost” following this government’s elephantine fear of a tiny ant.

Having known that the World Bank/IMF offers loan facilities for public calamities just like in Yolanda, Secretary Dominguez must have sounded out Work Bank Director Fock about the need for loan assistance for the government’s ensuing pandemic response.

But by March, this government must have been contemplating only on a policy of mitigation with tight airport controls.

This government would have followed the same mitigation policy in the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic with less adverse effects on the economy. In fairness to this government, it would not have intentionally crashed the economy with an extreme lockdown, although it was already gripped by its fear of thousands of body bags in Italy back in March.

Unfortunately for Secretary Dominguez, the policy of mitigation was not in the agenda of the World Bank/IMF. Just as the World Bank/IMF demanded Lukashenko to impose the extreme lockdown even to the point of putting its economy in tatters, so it must have been the same lockdown imposition for the Philippines.

But unlike Lukashenko who stood firm against the lockdown at all cost true to his genuine nature as a strongman, President Duterte, in all subservience, must have succumbed to an elephantine fear of a tiny ant by accepting the lockdown of the World Bank/IMF just in order to secure the loan. Driven by a “mass psychosis”, to borrow the words of President Lukashenko, this government tipped the national scale in favour of a very stringent military-type lockdown, resulting in a nightmare of human misery for 6 months now.

The harsh lockdown imposed by the World Bank/IMF appears to be continuing, because the lockdown has been protracted for almost six months. The easing of the lockdown at the fourth month, with a 15-day interruption of the MECQ, could not have been done without the conformity of the World Bank/IMF.

In fact, the continuing, prolonged and seemingly endless lockdown imposed by World Bank/IMF has turned the Philippines into a virtual hostage unable to get out of the quagmire without the World Bank’s imprimatur.

The question now begs an answer. Against the backdrop of the corruption hounding the LP administration in the aftermath of Yolanda and the P15 Billion stolen in the Philhealth scandal hounding this government during this pandemic, which is much bigger in scale than the Napoles PDAF scam, we demand to know if the Word Bank billions of funds have also not been stolen by a band of thieves in government in this Covid "scamdemic."