ENDURING ECHO OF REFERENDUM

It has been eight months after the referendum of October 17, 2004 which resulted in Constitution amendment in Belarus. The Belarusian authorities take it now for a historical event serving foundation for Belarusian policy development and implementation, the most important stage of which will become the forthcoming presidential election. They neglect the opinion of the international community, which disagree with the officials results of the referendum, and represent President A. Lukashenko’s participation in this election as legitimate and undisputed. Has the referendum become just a historical event for the Belarusians, or it still stirs their minds? The answer is crucial for the country’s future. Thus, if A. Lukashenko’s participation in the new election is legitimate in the opinion of most voters, his election to the third term will also become legitimate. (In fact, most voters and experts have no doubts in his victory.) Here is what the Belarusians think today about the last-year referendum and election. (See Table 1).

Obviously, the number of those who think that the official results of the October’2004 referendum and parliamentary election are not true is the same as the number of those who believe that those results are true. To remind, in November (one month after the election and the referendum) 48.5% of respondents said the results were true while 35.2% of respondents said the election wasn’t free or fair. For the past six months, the number of the first went down and the number of the second went up. This means that people somehow learned about true results while some other decided to air their true opinion. Undoubtedly, this points out to that many Belarusians are dissatisfied with the situation in the country. If they were satisfied, the ratio of estimates would be opposite. This conclusion proves to be true in comparison of political attitudes of the voters groups which estimate differently referendum and election results. (See Table 2).

Thus, their political attitudes are almost diametrically opposite: those who don’t believe the official results are very critical about the authorities and their course while those who believe the authorities are, on the contrary, very positive about the current course and its chief inspirer. Hence, criticism of the election and referendum official results strengthens critical attitude to the current situation in the country. On the contrary, critical attitude to the situation in the country strengthens critical attitude to the official results of referendum and election.

Many figures (both within the authorities and the opposition) claim that the political culture of the Belarusians is very inert; that most citizens live and give estimates out of habit, based on their generations-built concepts; that those dissatisfied with the current state and looking for changes think that they are the minority; that the situation will not change while the authorities hold control over the leading mass media. Is this true?

As it goes from Tables 3 and 4, two thirds of the Belarusians do discuss social and political problems and two thirds of them are certain that the majority shares their opinion. This means that almost total control of the authorities over the mass media doesn’t block up informal communication, and the information within their system embeds into the political culture of the Belarusians. This gives us grounds to suggest that the echo of referendum can hit the presidential election and question legitimacy of its results.

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