IN SEARCH OF CAMPAIGN'S HIT

Will any question of these become the most important at the presidential election of 2006? We can come to certain conclusions based on the questions which respondents in general as well as supporters and opponents separately asked to the president. For the purpose of this research, we agreed that supporters are those who intend to vote for A. Lukashenko at the coming election and opponents are those who are ready to vote for any other candidate or participate in a protest march in case the election is rigged. It appears that neither A. Lukashenko’s opponents nor his supporters want to know more about him as a candidate. Remarkably, the most frequent question in both groups is “For how long are you going to rule?” The supporters ask it in a positive sense meaning “For how long from now will you have your strength?” while the opponents ask it in a negative sense meaning “When will you quit?”

The president currently in office, especially with such a high rating, is an obvious favorite of an election race. This is why the questions addressed to him are reflection of the campaign’s key slogan and its emotional line. It is very hard to change, and therefore candidates most often aim at fitting this line and using it to their benefit. As the Table 1 shows, its key issue is welfare improvement.

Yet, how the opposition camp interprets the campaign’s key question is strikingly different from how presidential supporters and those vacillating understand it. Only 4% of opposition respondents are concerned about welfare and 17% – about “For how long will he rule?”

In all the rest, oppositionists either don’t have questions to A. Lukashenko or ask the questions which cannot be classified and statistically processed in view of their low frequency. “When will people live well? Why does A. Lukashenko think that no one can replace him? Why are human rights violated in Belarus?” All these questions asked by opposition-minded respondents lie at the margin of error. At the same time their opinion is very important since the people putting questions on political agenda are usually opinion leaders in their midst. According to the opinion poll, 31.6% of respondents are ready to vote for a candidate for democratic opposition and 38% want to give a chance to some other candidate. This means one third of votes is not distributed yet and these are to be fought for during the election campaign.

Meanwhile, opponents to the authorities should have had tough time working out a single line and a single slogan which could be accepted both in their circle and in the society in general. Exactly in the last days of canvassing the press stated that out of about fifty slogans A. Milinkevich’s supporters chose the slogan “Freedom. Truth. Justice.” (See Nasha Niva, No. 3/2006 of January 20, 2006). On February 17, A. Milinkevich personally announced this slogan. He explained his choice in the following way: “The program I chose for the election is very simple. It is grounded on three values which are freedom, truth and justice. These three words didn’t appear in my head or someone else’s. They are the result of our many trips around the country… What is the freedom that people want? They look for freedom of individual, freedom of conscience and freedom of opinion. They talk about the necessity to have freedom of information and freedom of economic activity. Most often, they say they need to get free from total fear.” (See Belorusy and Rynok, No.7/2006 of February 20, 2006).

Meanwhile, the current president easily advanced with the old slogan “For strong and prosperous Belarus!” which ideally suits the atmosphere of the election campaign and which easily rhymes with slogans “For Lukashenko” and “For Belarus.” (See example of open rhyming in the ONT channel’s project called “For Belarus” (February 5, 2006): Singer Ilona Bronevitskaya recalled, “… I had a chance, I was honored to stand at the stage of the Slav Fair. At the end of the performance Alexander Grigorievich came on the stage and presented a bunch of flowers to each of us. My goodness, I felt such a thrill of joy. I love Belarus. For Belarus!” Also, see quotations by Belarusian Journalist Association on the mass media monitoring in the article “Covering of the presidential election 2006 in the Belarusian media,” Bulletin No.2 of February 13, 2006).

It is noteworthy that this is not A. Lukashenko but his major rival who is addressed the questions of approximately 1.5 million voters who want to have life in the country changed. They want to know how to achieve this. This would be a great luck if the opposition leader could make this question the hit of his campaign. However, this is possible only if he gives a simple and clear answer to this question. If the sole candidate fails to satisfy interest of the supporters of changes, voters will have too little grounds to vote for him.

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