ONE MORE MESSAGE

Annual message made by president of Belarus, A. Lukashenko, attracted much public attention. However, as it can be seen from the Table 1, this attention was 18.5 points points two years ago. What is the reason of such a failing regularity? The answer is evident. The majority of common people and Belarusians as well, live their ordinary lives full of common problems (family, work, dacha and so on). Yes, they practically every day watch television, but for them it is not the way to see the world, it is the shield that separates them from the world. They switch on TV merely for seeing "pictures", and this picture, more preferably, should be "funny".

Even for a politician who possesses a monopoly right to produce TV "pictures" it is difficult to attract much audience's attention. Firstly, because his monopoly on television is vague. Not all the channels belong to the state, and a person has a choice what channel to watch. Secondly, as the Soviet experience shows, limitations on choice don’t prevent a person from switching on television and starting to watch such programmes.

However, this rule has its exceptions. To such you can surely attach presidential elections, at which the Belarusians, in contrast to European neighbours, chose not a representative of their interests but their fate. Out of this comes the effect of mobilization and great attention to the policy and its only interpreter A. Lukashenko.

The figures of Table 2 help to assess the attitude of the Belarusians to the most acute problems touched upon in the report.

First of all the Belarusians agreed with the A. Lukashenko's statement in connectedness with the Church and the State. For the country where more than 70% of people are considered to belong to Orthodox belief such a statement is evident. The opposition should take this fact into consideration if they want to find supporters among believers. But contentedness to stop financing of non-profitable enterprises astonished everybody. Possibly it is due to precise formulation of answer variants. In reality the problem of non-profitable enterprises always appears to be arguable. That is why there was no public approval of the fact that economical bankrupts would not get any state financial support.

The opinions divided in connection with the problem that Belarus would take leading positions in the world economy. But the rate of those who had a difficulty in answering the question was not high. Considering the complexity of the problem such decisiveness astonished. The explanation of the paradox is likely to be found in Parkinson's laws, one of which says: "The more difficult is a problem, the less time we spend to discuss it".

A similar distortion of opinions was caused by the idea of Belarusian nation unity. It can be explained by the fact that either ideologists don't work to the full of their capacity or the reality in brains of some Belarusian leaders doesn’t coincide with the reality which common people can see in their everyday life.

But the proportion of those who agree and those who disagree with the fact that the state is able to cooperate with its people in order to make strategic decisions is not equal. The percentage of people who don't agree is greater. Authoritarian power is the only explanation of this. It is enough to remember the latest visits of Russian presidents to Belarus (V. Putin in December 2007 and D. Medvedev in June 2008), when all acute for the country problems where discussed behind the scene.

More disagreed people appeared when A. Lukashenko tried to position bureaucrats responsible for price growth. In reality people attribute such actions to a person who wants to sneak his responsibility. And 43.5% of Belarusians know who wants to sneak his responsibility.

No comments are attached to the proportion of those who agree and disagree with distribution of reliefs. There is also no need to comment the attitude of the Belarusians to the forthcoming making "Belarusfilm" a forceful competitor of the American Hollywood. It is surprising that the last place in the poll is taken by those who do not share the opinion that a magic power of $ 700 wages will contribute to stabilization in the country. Pay attention, the question is not about people’s belief in great growth of wages but about preserving of stability in the state.

We have mentioned above that most Belarusians are apt to coexist with their everyday problems. Naturally, wages take up not the last place in the list of their every day's problems. That's why an average Belarusian is able to assess quite objectively what $ 700 wages will have meant for him by the end of a 5-year period. The average Belarusian is unlikely to read "Narodnaya volya" but he knows exactly that such wages will be paid in Russia to people in the first quarter of the year. It is not an easy matter to live in a state with growing inflation and look forward to the end of 5-year period.

Traditionally a special attention was paid to agriculture, to building of agro-towns, in particular. The head of the state reported to the deputies of the National Assembly in a sure way: "More than 600 agro-towns have appeared for the last three years. We are planning to build another 271 towns this year". The poll conducted in June revealed that the majority of Belarusians approve of such an activity (52.2%), the percentage of people who are against are much fewer – 22%. It is evident that those who approve of such actions don’t very often think much of the price paid by them for such an activity of A. Lukashenko as tax payers.

In conclusion let's again have a critical look at the data of sociological polls. In the message the findings of state struggle with criminals for the last 6 years have been provided. They are not optimistic: the level of crimes for 100 thousand of people has increased by 1.7 per cent, the number of the killed and wounded is more than 40 thousand, but disclosure of crimes has decreased.

Such official statistics, presented by the head of the state by the way, haven't prevented 28.9% of the interviewed from answering the question: "How has the level of crimes changed for the last 2-3 years?" that it has decreased. Only 19.8% answered that it has increased, and about 42.6% – were not able to answer.

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