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BULLETINS INFOFOCUS № 9

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 9, 2012 – ISSN 1822-5578 (only Russian)

Content:

Introduction
1. Basic trends of September
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. The Novobelitskaya anomaly of republican scale
3.2. Modernization potential of those flogged
4. Economics
4.1. Fundamental imbalances of emissions are never cured
4.2. Negative economic state of the market is for long
4.3. An oil state
5. Finances
5.1. In wait for devaluation
6. Our forecast for September
7. From the IISEPS desktop

Introduction:

Dear readers!

 

Just as we had supposed, the topic of “solvents-thinners” became the focus of interest of the non-state mass media in September. If the parliamentary election is only an episode in history of development of modern Belarus, and in a couple of months even experts will not be able to elicit its influence on the development of socio-economic processes in the country, consequences of “solvents-thinners” export termination can be felt by virtually every Belarusian already today. It is another matter that not everybody is able to realize where the troubles he or she got taxed with are coming from. Let us cite the dynamics of the balance of foreign trade in goods for the last three months: June – $ 306.5m, July – $ 141.6m, August – minus $ 363.6m. For a country with open economy such dynamics stand high. Let us remind the readers that according to the Prime Minister M. Myasnikovich, in Belarus the share of export makes up 84% of GDP (for reference – in the USA the rate equals 13%, in India – 22%, in China – 27%, and in Russia and Great Britain – about 30%).
The balance of foreign trade comes for the Belarusian socio-economic model under the slogan “It means everything to us!”; that is why our forecast concerning acceleration of the Belarusian ruble’s fall and response of the population to its fall has also come true. “Belarus is on the threshold of foreign exchange deficit again” is a typical headline for an article on economy on independent Internet sites.
As for the outcome of the parliamentary election, under the present condition of society its predictability did not spawn any doubts: “Democracy is a system under which parties lose the vote. There are parties – groups of people with certain interests, values and opinions. There is struggle going on by the rules. There are temporary winners and losers”. This is how A. Pshevorsky, an American political scientist, understands democracy; however, this is his personal opinion and nothing else. As it is known, there is no less democracy in Belarus than in the West. It simply does not provide for a possibility of losing the vote for the ruling group. It does not provide for the rights of some groups of people for interests, values and opinions of their own if these interests, values and opinions differ from the officially declared ones. It does not provide for the status of temporary winners and losers either. The former, as well as the latter, are defined for many years ahead regardless of the results of the policy pursued by them.
The turnout is the only “blunder” of our September forecast. The Central Election Committee reported 74.2%, whereas we had supposed it would not venture to show more than 70%. Aspiration for showing yet again mass support of the policy pursued in the country outweighed the troubles generated by the undisguised rigging. This is the nature of the regime. In a political environment, i.e. an environment tolerating the polyphony of interests, values, and opinions it is not able to reproduce itself.

IISEPS executive board

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