IISEPS — Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Politycal Studies

LIBYAN REVOLUTION AND PUBLIC OPINION OF BELARUS

The data of the December opinion poll give us an opportunity to estimate attitude of Belarusians to the overthrow of the Libyan leader M. Gaddafi (Table 1).

Table 1. Distribution of answers to the question: "Ruler of Libya Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed last year as a result of months-long battles. What do you think about the events that happened there?"

Variant of answer	%
It was a popular uprising against the dictator	35.5
It was a war of the West and its henchmen against Libya	35.0
DA/NA	29.5

The Belarusian official mass media were persistently convincing their audience of the second version of the Libyan events. President A. Lukashenko characterized them rather unambiguously: "How can we regard the activity of NATO troops in Libya? As violation of the United Nations Security Council mandate… It was aggression; the leadership of the country is killed, not only Muammar Gaddafi. At that, how was he killed? He might have been shot or perished in a battle. However, it happened with the help of special service agencies (don’t think that he, head of state, was detained by lads – you know how he was guarded). Seizure of the country’s leader was carried out by NATO Tactical Assault Groups. He was humiliated, taunted, shot at, raped being wounded; his arms were twisted and broken, and then he was tortured to death. They were worse than fascists in their day".

However, opinion of the Belarusian society in this respect was divided virtually in half. What did it depend on? The data of Table 2 give us an answer to the question.

Table 2. Relationship of assessment of M. Gaddafi’s overthrow to socio-demographic characteristics and political assessments, %

Variant of answer	It was a popular uprising against the dictator	It was a war of the West and its henchmen against Libya
Age:
18-29	39.0	32.8
30-50	35.7	37.6
60 +	31.5	31.2
How has your financial standing changed for the last three months?
It has improved	25.9	26.9
It has not changed	38.7	31.1
It has become worse	35.5	38.7
Who is responsible for the current crisis in Belarus?
President	42.2	35.2
Opposition	29.9	34.3
USA	26.9	43.8
Is it necessary, in your opinion, to implement market reforms in Belarus?
Yes	42.0	33.7
No	25.2	44.8
Do you trust the president?
Yes	24.5	40.0
No	45.1	33.7
If you had to choose between integration with Russia and joining the European Union, what choice would you make?
For integration with the Russia	26.0	44.8
For joining the EU	49.8	27.0
Do you consider yourself in opposition to the present authorities?
Yes	58.3	28.6
No	29.0	37.8

Attitude to the incumbent Belarusian authorities proves to be the strongest differentiate factor. In this case deviation from the mean values makes up to 13 percentage points. Perhaps, to some extent it happens due to projecting of the Libyan situation onto the Belarusian one. However, a more natural interpretation consists in the following: people who do not trust the authorities do not trust the information coming from them, as well as assessments of the events occurring in the world. This version is confirmed by the fact that people who also have every reason to be dissatisfied with the home authorities (e.g., those who stated worsening of their financial position), but who have not lost their trust in them, are less inclined to support the version of a people’s uprising in Libya than respondents who do not trust the Belarusian leadership.