WHAT DOES THE MAJORITY WANT?

Results of the opinion poll conducted right after the presidential election show that A. Lukashenko made a clean sweep of the election. Indirectly, this is proved in questions on living standard, current political course and common ideological attitudes to which most of respondents gave answers in the same manner as proclaimed by A. Lukashenko. Of course, this is “fear effect” which might have influenced answers of respondents (some of them didn’t dare to say they didn’t vote for A. Lukashenko). However, polling data about voting at the election well agrees with answers to the other questions of the questionnaire.

It is unlikely that a respondent who chose stability and not changes, who says that his/her living standard went up, who gives preference to Russia and not Europe and who says he voted for A. Lukashenko answered to all the questions in this way out of fear. On the contrary, quite naturally such views on a wide range of social problems urged him/her to vote for a politician who sticks to the same views.

In this regards, we should like to bring to your attention the situations in which this interrelation is broken, i.e. when these or those statements and actions of authorities are not supported by the majority and, what’s more, the majority, at least relative, speaks out against them. Thus, asked the question “On March 16, General S. Sukhorenko, KGB Chair, publicly stated that “a coup d’etat is prepared in the country under the cover of the presidential election.” Do you agree with this?”, 30.9% of the polled said “yes” but 49.1% said “no”. The Chair’s law innovation received even less support with respondents. Only 26.8% of them answered in the positive while 58.1% in the negative to the following question: “On March 16, General S. Sukhorenko also stated that active participation in the actions of protest against the election results would be regarded as terrorist acts. Do you as well think that mass actions of protest are a form of terrorism?”

Also, the official standpoint received little support in the questions of Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. Distribution of answers to the question “When trying to get registered for participation in the All-Belarusian Assembly, presidential candidate A. Kozulin, former Head of the Belarusian State University, was beaten up by special services officers. Also, they instituted two criminal cases against him for “unlawful actions”. What is your attitude to this?”

Table 2. Distribution of answers to the question “Many of our fellow citizens don’t trust the election results because opposition representatives weren’t presented in election commissions. What’s your opinion of this?”

The above examples are close to one another. They all pertain to discrimination of the opposition and to threats to apply force against it or to the very acts of force against it. In all these cases pro-Lukashenko majority split. Many people ready to vote for A. Lukashenko don’t approve such actions initiated by him or his people.

Clearly, this doesn’t mean that such disagreement with the power on certain particular issues will soon generate disagreement with the power in general. However, this shows that the Belarusians soak in the formulas like “If a foe doesn’t yield, it should be destroyed” since under Stalin. The majority approves actions of the authorities including those actions which don’t conform to democratic standards. The majority, yet not everyone. With their suppressive actions against the opposition aimed at external integrity of the society, the authorities only increase disagreement of the society on those few issues.