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PUSHED FOR TURNING UP

Cancellation of mandatory turnout at the local elections gave rise to the hope that in the course of the March expression of will the district committees would not get “from above” a voter turnout plan. This point of view was shared by many independent experts and opposition politicians. In our opinion, such abandonment of putting over “the plan” would mean the change of the very nature of the political regime in Belarus. Firstly, the new election law cancelled the turnout threshold only for the local elections, which the authorities considered a rehearsal of the presidential election. Therefore, observing this norm would have destabilized the debugged election mechanism. However, this is not the key point. The actual voter turnout data might destroy the main ideological myth cultivated by the authorities for many years. Let us set it forth in the words of the Chief of President’s Administration V. Makey: “Over the last 15 years a united nation has been formed in Belarus, a nation not torn apart by internal strives and controversy and, above all, welded around its leader”. Repeated allegations of the President himself serve the same purpose, as if he had commanded to lower the level of support (“electoral fraud”) he received in 2006.

The myth of a united nation welded around the president makes it possible for the authorities to speak about the opposition as of a marginal group lacking links with the community. Curiously, the results of IISEPS social research have recently been used in the governmental mass media with increased frequency. Here is just one example we took from Sovietskaya Belorussia, “Let me cite the data of the nation-wide opinion poll conducted in December 2009 by the Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies (registered in Lithuania, the leader professor O. Manaev). Answering the question if the presidential election were held tomorrow, only 4.3% of respondents said they would vote for A. Milinkevich, 2.4% – for A. Kozulin. And that is all!” The fact that in all the three presidential elections not less than 26% of electorate (among respondents) voted in favour of democratic candidates was emphatically concealed by the largest newspaper of Belarus.

The authorities’ outlook towards the traditional level of voter turnout was confirmed in April by the Informational-Analytical Centre under the President’s Administration (IAC), which published the opinion poll results according to which 80.5% of Belarusian citizens affirmed a settled intention to take part in voting. They must have had second sight: according to CEC data the voter turnout at the local elections reached 79.5% (79.2% in 2007).

The June poll of IISEPS registered a different turnout level (Table 1), which was not a surprise because in March 62.9% of respondents expressed their will to take part in voting. By the European standards it is quite a high percentage, but Belarusians are still in the grip of the Soviet tradition defining participation in voting as “fulfillment of one’s civil duty”. It is noteworthy that turnout depends on the voters’ political preferences. The oppositionists’ allegations on low turnout versus a high rate of support of opposition candidates, which, in particular, were the case after the parliamentary elections of 2008, contain logical contradiction. The polls show that the lower the turnout, the lower the percentage of the opposition supporters who have taken part in voting. This rule proved true at the March election as well.

Table 1. Dynamics of answering the question, “Did you take part in voting at the election to Local Deputy Councils in April 2010?”, %

Variant of answer

03’03

01’07

06’10

All respondents

Trusting A. Lukashenko

Not trusting A. Lukashenko

Yes

65.8

61.8

64.6

74.5

49.9

No

33.1

37.7

35.3

25.5

50.1

Needless to say, the voters’ activity in town and in village is not the same. During the latest elections the number of voters who voted in Minsk reached 47.4% and in villages, 72.6%.

A major national feature of the voting process in Belarus is voting ahead of schedule. It is a new tradition. Under communists, after breaking up of the Constitutional Convention in 1918 there was already no necessity in alternative candidates, hence there was no need for frauds. Therefore, under communism only reindeer-breeders at the stock-stands remote from the central settlements voted ahead of schedule. Does this mean that modern Belarus has turned into entire “remote stock-stand”? To a certain extent, yes. The strategy (“I shall not lead my state after the civilized world”) promulgated as early as 1996 could hardly have led to different results.

In March 17.3% of voters voted ahead of schedule (Table 2), but it is of the number of respondents. Taking into consideration the actual voter turnout, 27.5% voted ahead of schedule. The CEC official figure announced on the last day of pre-schedule voting was 29.3%. It is clear that that figure was cited as of the nominative list of voters. According to CEC, that pre-schedule turnout proved to have been higher than in 2007. At that time 24.9% of voters voted ahead of schedule. According to CEC’s Secretary N. Lozovik, the willingness of Belarusians to vote ahead of schedule was caused by the public awareness efforts of the election organizers. He was criticizing the statements of opposition candidates as regards the use of the administrative leverage by the authorities. Let us quote, “Opposition, as consistent with its role, presents in the negative light even all that good that is done in the country. Even the fact that one can vote not only on presentation of passport, but other documents as well, is presented as a condition aiding electoral fraud. If there were no clear reasons to criticize the election practice, opposition might invent them”.

Table 2. Dynamics of answering the question, “When did you vote?”, %

Variant of answer

01’07

06’10

I voted ahead of schedule

23.4

17.3

I voted on the election day

38.5

47.3

I did not take part in voting

37.8

35.1

In 2003 during the first round of local elections (at that time conducting the elections in two rounds was not an exotic rarity) 12.5% of voters voted ahead of schedule. Hence, the phenomenon of pre-schedule voting has formed in the country over the last 15 years. It may be considered one of the key indicators of the controllability of the Belarusian community achieved thanks to coordinated efforts of all governmental bodies. Important detail: in March 2010 only 7.5% of respondents confirmed that they had been pushed for voting ahead of schedule (Table 3). We think it proves that the pushing activity on the part of the state is considered absolutely natural by many Belarusians. And this is already an element of the Soviet past reinforced by the Belarusian present.

Table 3. Dynamics of answering the question, “Did anyone at the past election make you vote ahead of schedule or not?”, %

Variant of answer

03’03

01’07

06’10

Yes

6.4

11.5

7.5

No

88.2

87.1

91.9

If we compare the level of pushing for pre-schedule voting at the local elections with the level of pushing for voting in favour of a concrete candidate, the latter will appear significantly lower (Table 4). It is not surprising if we take into account that on average to one mandate there pretended 1.2 candidates. Herewith, to 24 thousand Deputy seats there pretended slightly more than three hundred opposition candidates.

Table 4. Dynamics of answering the question, “Did anyone at the past election make you vote in favour of a concrete candidate or not?”, %

Variant of answer

03’03

01’07

06’10

Yes

3.9

4.4

4.1

No

90.3

94.1

94.2

Retaining of the Soviet tradition of mass voting ensured by soft pushing from the authorities is accompanied by a tangible slump of the voters’ interest in the election results. While eight years ago the greater portion of the population knew the election results, today it is only 42.1% (Table 5). The information awareness of the voters trusting A. Lukashenko, as expected, proved to be higher than that of their political opponents (they vote for their friends), but even among the line supporters the level of awareness did not reach 50%.

Table 5. Dynamics of answering the question, “Do you know the voting results of the election to Local Deputy Councils?”, %

Variant of answer

03’03

01’07

06’10

All respondents

Trusting A. Lukashenko

Not trusting A. Lukashenko

Yes

51.8

48.2

42.1

47.7

36.4

No

45.5

46.9

51.1

46.7

56.3

DA

2.7

4.9

6.8

5.3

5.6

Answering the question, “Was the candidate you had voted for elected deputy?” 24.2% gave affirmative answers, 17.0% gave negative answers and 58.8% found it difficult to answer. The correlation of affirmative and negative answers is rather strange in view of the fact that there were only 1.2 candidates for one seat. Most likely, this inconsistency is another indicator of the voters’ low information awareness of the election results.

This conclusion is also confirmed by the answers to the question of Table 6. The candidates-opponents of A. Lukashenko could not have gained 9.4% of votes throughout the country, even if all 100% of voters in all the constituencies had voted for them. It should be noted that according to the 2003 poll data 9.9% voted in favour of candidates-opponents of A. Lukashenko, and in 2007, 5%.

Table 6. Distribution of answers to the question, “For what candidate did you vote?”

Variant of answer

%

For a candidate – proponent of A. Lukashenko

31.2

For a candidate – opponent of A. Lukashenko

9.4

For another candidate

10.7

Against all

5.9

I damaged the ballot

0.5

I did not take part in voting

31.2

Refused to answer

7.9

NA

3.2

The voting activity of Belarusians is in fact the only kind of mass “political” participation. The quotation marks here are used on purpose. Voting in terms of the Belarusian variant means not participating in the political life, neither supporting of various decisions, nor sharing social responsibility. It is not even examining the authorities by people the examiner, whatever had been said in this respect from the highest governmental rostrum. For the power/authorities to report to the community, “the community”, according to the sociologist T. Vorozheikina, “must, to say the least, exist”. Well, that is our problem.