IT ALL DEPENDS ON VOTER'S STANDPOINT

Soon after the referendum it turned obvious that President A. Lukashenko was not going to make fundamental changes to his political course. The objectives he aired (improvement of the situation in the educational and healthcare systems and struggle against bureaucrats) were merely a set of beauty aids to improve the government system. New initiatives (ban on rehabilitation of Belarusian children abroad, toughening the procedure of getting funds from abroad and amendment to the law on internal troops) demonstrated willingness to avert the processes that would weaken in the future his undivided authority. It looks like the president will never let out the “golden cup called Belarus”.

There are some important questions arising in this regard. To which degree is the current Belarusian regime stable? Is the Ukrainian scenario possible in Belarus? What social groups can stand up for changes? What do opinion leaders and experts think about this?

Although amendment of the Constitution opened the road to the third presidential term for the president (potentially – to permanent governance), most of them are convinced that president’s position almost didn’t change after the referendum and the election (See Table 1).

Yet, there’s an obvious divergence of opinion in the answers of respondents: there are almost threefold more of those who think that A. Lukashenko’s authority has strengthened rather than weakened among the public sector employees while private sector employees stick to the opposite viewpoint. It is hard to expound for the optimism of the private sector employees. Pessimism of their colleagues from the official bodies seems more reasonable. On the one hand, a great part of state officials was actively involved in the election and referendum organization. Perhaps, some of them might have worked with an honest effort rather than out of fear and this is why feel belonging to the presidential victory. Others just didn’t dare to refuse from participation in the campaign. Now, they both see that the authorities have once again got away with this. Therefore, there are no grounds to assume that there may be a different scenario in the future.

“The case of Marinich” is another ground for such moods among the officialdom. All who watched it have unanimously noted that such a hard sentence to the former Mayer, Minister and Ambassador was obviously given as a lesson for the Belarusian nomenclature. What conclusions did it come to? Answers of the public and private sector employees to this question are again pretty different (See Table 2).

Over half of respondents said that the “case of Marinich” played for the nomenclature is a signal to seek for an alternative to the current course. This does encourage. However, optimists should be careful. After the many reshuffles and resignations, there are still many people among the officials who took the results of the case exactly this way. Yet, they are barely a majority. Clearly, these figures can hardly stand an evidence of a kind of coup-d’etat growing within the nomenclature. This is rather an emotional shock of an unexpectedly severe punishment. As a rule, the first reaction in such case is willingness to oppose transparent inequity at least with statements.

We think that 40% of leaders and experts from NGO’s are closer to truth in saying that the nomenclature took the case of Marinich as an act of intimidation (only 3% of officials agreed with this that, apparently, expounds for their unwillingness to admit this).

While the nomenclature had to turn to the analysis of losses within their ranks (arrests of directors of some large enterprises as well as the sentences to G. Zhuravkova and E. Rybakov), the opposition is solving the problem of its consolidation. Although it is long before the presidential election, the democratic forces – this time in advance – look to nominating a single candidate to compete with A. Lukashenko. For this purpose, they take consultations and sign documents like an agreement of the so-called “ten”. Leaders and experts give controversial estimates of its importance (See Table 3).

Thus, representatives of the democratic forces are very positive about signing this document while three fourths of public sector employees are convinced that it won’t influence the development of the country. Such a skeptical attitude is reasonable. There’s a number of similar agreements that were signed in the past, yet they brought almost no effect. In addition, outstanding representatives of some organizations that signed the document still cannot agree on consolidation of their efforts and actually fought with one another in the only constituency that announced the second round of election to the Parliament.

It is no wonder that the West took closer interest in Belarus after the referendum. As a result, many powerful politicians and agencies were involved in the solution of the Belarusian problem. This certainly encouraged the democratic forces. Belarus Democracy Act adopted by the American Congress and signed by President G. Bush has become one of the first feasible steps for their support. Attitude of experts and leaders to the consequences of Act’s implementation once again appeared far from unanimous (See Table 4).

Naturally, in the current situation the Belarusian civic society that is getting smaller and smaller lays its hopes on foreign aid increase. As for the skepticism of the public sector employees, it might be based on the knowledge of the very procedure of getting such aid that was developed by the government as well as on the assurance that the current authorities are not likely to take tough measures to avert such aid.

Public and private sector employees are more or less unanimous in the only thing: changes in the country depend the most on the Belarusian citizens rather than the opposition, nomenclature, foreign organizations or circumstances (See Table 5).

So, it is necessary to persuade the citizens in that democratic changes are vital and attainable. So far, less than a half of respondents from the private sector and one tenth – from the public sector believe in this.

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