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OSCE AMG IN BELARUS: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

Belarus is in the center of another international scandal: four months after the departure of first head of the OSCE Advisory and Monitoring Group in Belarus, experienced German diplomat H.G. Wieck, Acting AMG Head and French diplomat M. Rivollier was also forced to leave the country. It is highly possible that the remaining “officer-in-charge”, British diplomat Andrew Carpenter will follow suffer the same fate: his visa might also not be extended. Wieck’s official successor former German Ambassador to Ukraine E. Heyken has been trying to receive the consent of the Belarusian side for several months already, but in vain. The country’s authorities, including Foreign Minister of Belarus Mikhail Khvostov and the president himself openly declare: the OSCE mission as it used to be is no longer possible in Belarus. The AMG, they claim, started interfering with interior affairs, supporting opposition, therefore, its mandate should be amended. The OSCE management and many European leaders do not agree with this requirement and express their full support for the AMG. The scandal is flaring up.

Since we are neither politicians nor diplomats, we will not try to estimate the developments around the OSCE AMG from the point of view of international political and diplomatic standards. The attitude of the Belarusian society to the events is more important for us as for professional sociological researchers. As a rule, A. Lukashenko justifies all his crucial decisions by “the interests of the nation”, and till recently the nation’s support was the major source of his power. How far does the attitude of the authorities towards the OSCE AMG match that of the society?
In order to find the answer let us look at the results of the opinion poll held by the IISEPS in April. For many years we have been asking Belarusians about the trust to the most influential state and social institutions, since trust is the basis for stable power.
Table 1 shows, our fellow citizens trust the OSCE AMG more than they trust the majority of state and social institutions, including the government, the parliament, law enforcing structures and the president himself. Over just three years the society’s attitude towards this institution – which is in fact not even of Belarusian origin – has changed considerably (See Table 2).

Table 1. Confidence in the most important state and public institutions, %

State and public institutions
Trust
Distrust
DA/NA
Index of trust
Educational establishments (schools, colleges, institutions and universities)
56.9
23.0
20.1
+0.344
Church
51.9
27.4
20.7
+0.247
Army
47.4
31.6
21.0
+0.159
Independent research centers
40.4
24.9
34.7
+0.158
State-run research centers
33.3
32.4
34.3
+0.009
OSCE AMG in Minsk
28.8
31.4
39.8
–0.027
State-run mass media
38.7
43.1
18.2
–0.044
Constitutional court
35.5
40.2
24.3
–0.048
Non-state mass media
32.2
43.9
23.9
–0.119
Unions of entrepreneurs
25.0
38.3
36.7
–0.135
Free and independent labor unions
27.6
41.0
31.4
–0.136
President
32.4
50.1
17.5
–0.179
Central Election Commission
29.6
47.7
22.7
–0.183
KGB
27.7
46.9
25.4
–0.194
Labor Unions forming the Federation of Labor Unions
23.4
42.9
33.7
–0.198
Courts
28.6
50.6
20.8
–0.222
Government
26.1
52.3
21.6
–0.266
National Assembly
19.6
52.0
28.4
–0.328
Political parties support the present authorities
19.8
52.9
27.3
–0.335
XIII Supreme Soviet
15.7
51.0
33.3
–0.359
Opposition political parties
15.2
54.4
30.4
–0.397
Police
20.8
61.7
17.5
–0.413
Local authorities
20.4
61.3
18.3
–0.414

Table 2. Dynamics of public attitude towards the OSCE AMG in Belarus, %

The most noticeable and important change is the fact that the number of people who do not know anything about the activities of the OSCE AMG in Belarus and therefore cannot judge the situation has gone down 23%. Today more than 60% of the respondents express their attitude: half of them trust this organization, the other half – do not. The reason why the number of people who do not trust the OSCE has grown is understandable: mass aggressive anti-AMG propaganda through state mass media and regular statements from the top-ranking officials cannot but influence mass consciousness.
Why then in spite of all this the number of people who trust the AMG has grown even more? It is important to stress that we are not talking about those few who have personal experience of cooperating with the AMG (political parties leaders, social organizations activists, relatives of political prisoners, etc). We are talking about common (“simple” as the president likes to stress) people, who learned about the AMG’s activities from mass media, or even heard about it during the interview for the first time. The most important thing for people is to know where the activities of the organization are directed and what means it uses.
One of the most famous steps of the OSCE AMG in Belarus is putting forward four requirements for the Belarusian authorities, aimed at guaranteeing free and fair elections (parliamentary, presidential, local). These requirements were formulated during the talks of Belarusian opposition leaders and the OSCE management in the summer of 1999 and have since then been invariably repeated in the documents and statements of all international organizations as they fully correspond to the AMG mandate. How are they perceived by the society?
First of all it is evident that the majority of our citizens support every requirement of the OSCE with no exceptions, and they absolutely do not think that these statements reflect the interests of only a narrow group of political “blockheads”. Secondly, in three years the number of those who support these requirements has grown by 25% while the number of people who find difficulty in evaluating them has dropped almost 2-fold (See Table 3).

Table 3. Dynamics of public support for the demands of the OSCE and other international structures to Belarus’ authorities, %

OSCE demands
Support
Do not support
DA/NA
To provide the opposition with access to state-run mass media, including television
50.7*
44.6
30.2
22.4
19.1
33.0
To change powers of the parliament so that the laws adopted are obligatory for all authorities
71.8
55.5
9.4
8.5
18.8
36.0
To stop persecution of those who disagree with the present political course
73.3
59.1
11.3
11.1
15.4
29.8
To introduce amendments into the Electoral Code which would guarantee a free and fair election
77.1
62.0
7.7
9.1
15.2
28.9
Weight-average on all demands
68.2
55.3
14.5
12.8
17.3
31.9

* Numerator – results of the April 2002 survey conducted by IISEPS, denominator – the November 1999 survey

Another important step of the OSCE AMG in Belarus was the endeavor to organize talks between the opposition and official power representatives. As we know, these talks were started in the autumn of 1999 and turned out to be quite successful, but were torpedoed on the initiative of the president. The achieved agreements, in particular, the protocol on the access to state mass media were disavowed. Instead of these talks Belarusian authorities initiated “a comprehensive political dialog without any international mediators”, which ended in a complete failure in the summer of 2000, since only pro-presidential social organizations were allowed to take part in the “dialog” and there was no need whatsoever to “negotiate” with them.
As Table 4 shows, almost half of our fellow citizens still support the AMG’s idea of holding talks between the authorities and the opposition. in this respect the campaign on discrediting the AMG and its initiatives (accusations in “the interference with the interior affairs”, etc.) did not bring the expected effect. Moreover, the number of people without any definite attitude towards this initiative has dropped almost 2-fold during the last three years. One cannot but point out, however, that the number of the opponents of the talks – guided by diametrically opposite motives – has also grown considerably: about 35% of the respondents think so today. This means that the split of the society in its attitude to the present political line is growing. When the number of talks opponents exceeds the number of adherents, the possibility to find agreement by calm and peaceful means might be lost forever. Will president benefit from this? More and more severe mass sanctions will have to be used for “pacifying” those who do not agree with his line, and who knows how long these measures will be effective?

Table 4. Dynamics of public attitude towards negotiations between the Belarusian authorities and the opposition, %

Attitude towards negotiations
11’99
04’00
04’02
Negotiations are necessary, since only by means of negotiations it is possible to come to common grounds and consider different interests in our society
45.3
50.8
48.2
Negotiations are not necessary, because authorities violate law and human rights, it is necessary to force them observe laws, rather than maintaining a dialog
15.5
14.8
19.9
Negotiations are not necessary, because the opposition represents no one, and there is no need for authorities to talk to it
7.9
8.2
15.0
DA/NA
31.3
26.2
16.9
The research results show, the more our people know about the OSCE AMG activities, the more they support the group. It means that the mission is not only possible in Belarus, moreover, it is gravely needed for political stabilization. It is very likely that the AMG mission is even more necessary for the ruling party, which is afraid “to lose face” if it starts negotiations with the opposition, then for the latter itself. It will be immeasurably more difficult to “negotiate” with huge crowds of infuriated “common folk” when they take to the streets.