Trust rating of Belarusian government follows trust rating of the head of state like a thread follows a needle. And when there is a stabilization of A. Lukashenko’s rating, we should expect minimal changes of government’s trust rating as well. The June survey confirmed this conclusion: March – 37.0%, June – 35.9%.
It is natural to expect that respondents trusting the head of state also trust the government. 70% and 3.5% – these are the levels of trust to government among supporters and opponents of A. Lukashenko, and accordingly, the levels of distrust amount to 17% and 93.6%.
There is nothing surprising in it. Typical representatives of Belarusian “majority” still don’t understand the principle of separation of powers. And this is after 25 years of independence!
A. Lukashenko is the state. There are no questions. Everything is clear. But how ordinary TV-viewers can evaluate the work of another “new” government? What are the criteria? Not every analyst in Belarus can cope with this task. This is why the variant of answer “same as the previous one” (57.2%) is beyond comparison in the answers to the question of Graph 1. The high share (17.3%) of respondents, who didn’t know what to answer, should be noted as well.
Government’s rating of trust amounted to 35.9% in June, but at the same time only 14% of respondents think that government is a good team of politicians, who lead the country in the right direction! Who do Belarusians trust then? It looks like they trust people who mainly care about their own financial well-being and career (Graph 2).
It is natural that the answers to the question of Graph 2 are politically charged. This is why the “coefficient of split” (the ratio of answers of supporters and opponents of A. Lukashenko) for the last variant of answer equaled 18 (90.4% vs. 5%).
In the conditions of ongoing economic crisis Belarusian government has a real possibility to be listed as saboteurs. A. Lukashenko stated this on July 2 during a ceremony dedicated to the Independence Day: “On the eve of the holiday we’ve made some bailout decisions for enterprises. I warn the government and the leaders of these enterprises: if you don’t accomplish the plan, it will be regarded as sabotage!”
At the same time one should remember that government has to bailout the enterprises out of crisis state in a narrow corridor, limited by the Belarusian economic model (“there will be no deviations from this model”).
Who is going to be blamed for the final result, which can easily be predicted even today? The government or the head of state? Naturally, we are talking about blame from the point of view of public opinion. The answer to this question is not so evident today. The experience of 2011 testifies that concentration of power in the hands of one person means the concentration of responsibility in the same hands.