POLICY ANOMALY

The positive dynamics of two out of three public attitudes indices continued in December. To a certain extent an objective circumstance – November rise in pensions – also contributed to the growth of the financial position index (Table 1). The real amount of the assigned pension (the pension corrected in compliance with the index of consumer prices for the goods and services) increased 0.3% in November, 2009 in comparison with November, 2008, and as compared with October, 2009 it rose 9.1%.

Attention should be paid to the fact that increase of the FPI did not occur owing to the growth in the share of the citizens who registered improvement of their financial position (their share even decreased 3.6 percentage points), but rather owing to the reduction in the share of those whose assessments of their financial position became worse. In the last case the change equaled 10.9 points at once!

As a result of such regrouping the share of those whose financial position had not changed for the last three months rose up to the record level in December (let us remind you that the matter concerns subjective assessments). Thus the year having started with panic was concluded with stabilization. However, stabilization if we compare it with the opinion poll conducted in a month after the presidential elections in 2006 (the first column of Table 1) occurred on a lower level which the considerable difference between the FPI obtained in April, 2006 and December, 2009 testifies to.

Panic at the beginning of 2009 was registered not by sociologists alone. Let us refer to the official data of Belstat. If in January the people bought 42.2 thousand color TV-sets, than in February – only 15.5 thousand. The situation is similar with regard to refrigerators and deep-freezers (28.9 and 11.3 thousand) and to laundry washers (17.4 and 8.4 thousand). The quoted figures visibly demonstrate the January feverish demand generated by devaluation of the Belarusian ruble offered to the Belarusians as a New Year present by the National bank on January, 2.

Devaluation of the ruble undermined the sixth sense of the Belarusians – the sense of confidence in near future and gave rise to the necessity to save money. As a result, in January people directed 15.3% of their incomings into savings! The unusual combination of the growth in buying domestic appliances with the simultaneous growth in the savings rate took place at the expense of currency purchasing. However, the consternation caused by devaluation of the national currency dispersed rather quickly, and as a consequence the savings rate fell up to 5.4% according to the results of 11 months. The Belarusians began again to strenuously spend their current incomings on eating having believed in the reality of the "radiant future".

The given conclusion is also confirmed by the expectation index growth that continued in December (Table 2). Today only 15.7% of respondents believe that the socio-economic situation in Belarus is going to become worse within the next few years, virtually the same number of pessimists were registered right after the presidential elections in 2006 (the first column of Table 2)! In full compliance with the text of a well-known song about hope the Belarusians are ready to be satisfied with the little. "Just a song" will be enough for them as long as it is sung by the state propaganda.

As for the dynamics of the policy appropriateness index, it misfired (Table 3): in December, the PAI returned to its June value. The share of respondents who do not agree with the official policy virtually did not change, which is not a piece of news, though. The basis of this group of respondents is constituted by young and educated citizens, and they are not disposed to perform "grimaces and leaps" under the influence of the official propaganda.

However, what has raised the doubt level among the supporters of the official policy (values from the column "In the right direction" flowed into the column "DA/NA")? So far, there is no convincing answer to this question. Neither in November, nor in the first half of December when the poll was being conducted was the Belarusian multi-direction policy noticed in particular scandals. International economic news of the period was mostly positive, too. Regardless of the fact, the value of the column "In the right direction" has decreased 6.1 percentage points for the last three months. It is twice as higher than the coverage error and hence it cannot be accidental.

Answers to the question of Table 4 also confirm that decrease of the PAI turned out to be a peculiar anomaly. In comparison with the crisis, December of the previous year the present December was marked by the reduction of the share of citizens declaring their readiness to take part in the protest actions. Let us remind you that affirmative answers in the given case should be apprehended with caution. There is a great distance between a declaration and a real protest. Answers to the question of Table 4 are interesting first of all by their dynamics which are not contrary to the general tendency of the social attitude improvement.

The electoral rating of the head of the Belarusian state is in many respects a derivation from the social stability. At the boundary of 2008 and 2009, social stability was threatened, and the indicators registered by us gave us warning of it. Beginning with the second half of the year the public attitude trend sign changed from the negative into positive one. The problem began to disperse without any visible efforts on the part of the authorities. The mechanism of the step-down adaptation made itself felt once again. The point is that the society is interested in social stability preservation not less than the authorities are, and here the interest of the authorities (the subject) completely coincides with the interest of the society (the object).

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