INEQUITY OF AUTHORITIES PUSHES THE PEOPLE TO REVOLUTION

Nowadays, many Belarusians wonder what caused a number of recent “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Such different countries with diverse histories and cultures witnessed almost the same outcome – the people revolted and overthrew the power almost without mass violence and blood. Commenting on those dramatic events, the Belarusian authorities gave three major reasons of why that could happen: “First, weak power; second, low living standard and third – implementation of Western political technologies.” Participants of those events and many analysts disagree with such an explanation. A year ago, did anyone talk about weak power of L. Kuchma or A. Akaev? Are the prices higher and the quality of goods and services lower in Ukraine than in Belarus? Did the West give greater support to the Kyrgyz opposition than the Belarusian? In their opinion, inequity of the authorities has become a true reason of those revolutions. The power neglected, offended and humiliated rather than protected the people from miseries or helped it. Remarkably, people can suffer the greatest hardships like a war or natural disasters if those don’t disgrace them. In such conditions, authority and support of the authorities can be very high if people know and feel that the power stands for them and not against.

In our studies of Belarusian citizens’ attitude to the authorities, we decided not to confine to the traditional indicators like estimates, ratings, degree of trust, etc. but ask respondents one simple and clear question: “Over the past three years, have you survived an offence from public authorities?” In general, 26% of respondents answered “yes”, over 80% of them marked up “many times” or “several times”, and 74% answered “no”. Asked the qualifying question “Representatives of which bodies offended you, if any?”, 41.0% mentioned the militia, 34.2% – local authorities and 24.3% – other bodies. Specifying the way the citizens were offended, every third respondent said “my rights were broken”, every fourth – “I was insulted” and every fourth – “they squeezed money from me” or “the authorities didn’t perform their duties”.

Every fourth Belarusian citizen feels offended by the authorities. Is this many or few? Can these figures be considered as a borderline of public tolerance? To answer this question, we should like to analyze the social structure of those offended Belarusians, the system of their values and expectations and especially in what and to which extent they differ from the other part of Belarusian society.

From the standpoint of social demography, there is no great difference between these two groups of the Belarusians, except that the offended are mostly citizens in economically active age (30 to 50) and with a higher level of education. Thus, if the authorities happen to offend the citizens, they do this without any preferences – men and women, young and aged, company chiefs and regular employees, city-dwellers and villagers, residents of both western and eastern regions. It is wrong to say that these offended Belarusians are that very “protesting electorate” discontented with the current course. There’s a great number of A. Lukashenko’s supporters among them while there’s as well a great number of A. Lukashenko’s opponents among those not offended citizens. In other words, the offended citizens are all common Belarusians.

Different are social frames of mind (or attitudes) and expectations of these two groups of the Belarusian society. (See Table 1).

It is obvious that the two groups differ dramatically in their social frame of mind. Those offended by the authorities approve striking entrepreneurs, suffer of corruption (by the way, they think that it is born by the entire economic system and not separate officials) and give pessimistic estimates of country’s economic prospects (this is why most of them don’t accept the current course but expect that it changes). They are mostly citizens who voted against Constitution amendment at the referendum and for opposition or independent candidates at the parliamentary election, who trust the data of Gallup’s Institute rather than the Central Election Commission, who are discontented with democratization in the country, who think that top Belarusian officials are engaged in disappearances of opposition figures, who are transparently pro-European and think that these are the Belarusian authorities that pose a threat to Belarus and not some foreign states, who expect deterioration of country’s prospects in case of A. Lukashenko’s victory at the coming presidential election and this is why they are ready to vote for a candidate able to compete successfully with the current head of state. Regarding those who take no offence against the authorities, the majority is pretty loyal to the current course and is moderately optimistic about the future. In most attitudes, these two social groups are not simply different but obviously antagonistic.

Another classic indicator of how the people estimate authority’s equity and fairness is its “feeling of law observance”, or estimation of human rights observance in the country. In average, only 26.7% of respondents said that basic human rights (ten basic rights were listed) are always observed in this country and nearly 60% stated that they are observed randomly or never. In the opinion of citizens, the following rights are violated most often. (See Table 2).

More thorough analysis shows that this is exactly resentment against the authorities that is a major reason of sharp “decline in people’s feeling of law observance”. (See Table 3).

Thus, over half of those offended by the authorities claim that their basic rights are not observed at all. This is twice as much as among the general number of respondents! In its turn, “decline in the feeling of law observance” influences directly the electoral preferences of the Belarusians. (See Table 4).

The Belarusians ready to re-elect the current president have a much higher “feeling of law observance” than those ready to vote for an alternative candidate. What’s more, “decline in the feeling of law observance” not only changes inevitably the electoral preferences but significantly increases people’s readiness to active forms of protest. (See Table 5).

As the analysis shows, 12.8% of those not offended by the authorities over lately are ready to participate in mass meetings and demonstrations to air their opinions and 10.5% – in strikes while those numbers among offended respondents are 30.1% and 31.9% respectively!

Judging by relatively high president’s rating (46.4% of citizens are presently ready to vote for him) and satisfactory estimates given to the Belarusian authorities for their work in general (3 points at the five-point scale), people’s level of offence is still far from the public tolerance borderline that has revolutions beyond it. Yet, the logic of authorities’ inequity in this country is very similar to the same process in the countries of “color revolutions”. Resentment against the authorities takes citizens to comprehension of their inequity – this comprehension takes to understanding of human rights and their infringement – this understanding takes to changes of electoral preferences – this change, if not implemented through free and fair election, takes to the readiness to stand up human rights in the actions of public protest and revolution is its extreme form. Who knows, perhaps, with their actions the Belarusian authorities might provoke this process much quicker than all the actions of the opposition taken together and Belarus will see Kyrgyz or Romanian rather than Georgian or Ukrainian revolution?..

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