Contrary to our forecast, Russian prime-minister V. Putin did receive congratulations from Belarus on October, 7 - the day of his birthday. However, besides the short official text ("I am convinced, that your vast experience and authority of a leader will continue to favor strengthening of partnership in terms of mutual respect and fruitful collaboration") sent through the diplomatic channels, the article "What the FSB (Federal Security Service of Russia) is occupied with: money, cars, criminals, drugs" was posted on the website of "Sovetskaya Belorussia" as an off-the-record addition borrowed from the Russian "Nezavisimaya Gazeta". Let us quote the first paragraph of the article: "Employees of the FSB of the RF together with V. Putin, B. Sechin, V. Ivanov, S. Ivanov, N. Patrushev, N. Kovalev, R. Nurgaliev, E. Shkolov, E. Primakov and others should be hold responsible for essential elements of offences specified in article 275 (high treason) and in article 281 (diversion) of the Criminal Code of the RF; employees of the FSB of the RF must be tried by the military tribunal".
Our second forecast proved to be wrong, too. We surmised that the share of opposition parties' representatives in the polling stations would not exceed 12.8% (the result of the local elections). However, out of 1073 applications the authorities considered positively 183 (17%). Compare: the parties loyal to the authorities have a different arithmetic: nominated - 1808, included - 1586 (87.7%). If we take into account the fact that there are altogether 70815 people in the commissions, then representation of opposition equals only 0.26%.
As for the possibility to hold the presidential elections in a funny way, then more and more reasons for optimism appear with every passing day. At the end of October 11 presidential contenders reported transfer of 100 thousand signatures to the Central Election Committee. Here is an interesting detail: businessmen V. Provalsky, according to the official report of the CEC, gathered all the 109 thousand signatures in the Vitebsk region alone. Vitebsk party activists maintain that virtually all the signatures were gathered in the Pervomaisky district of the regional center. At that it should be taken into consideration, that the electoral roll in the Pervomaisky district does not much exceed the number of the collected signatures! The uncertainty concerning the possible non-recognition of the presidential elections' results by Russia did not disappear. The informational Belarusian-Russian war which to a great extent had encouraged the hopes of the opposition with regard to non-recognition was obviously played out by the end of October. We would not hurry to ascribe the answer of S. Naryshkin, head of the Administration of the Russian president, at the press conference for Belarusian journalists ("the relations will be determined not by the fact who the Belarusian people will elect president, but by the degree of compliance of the elections procedure with the norms of the Belarusian law and with the universally recognized international democratic norms") to the balance of supporters of the elections results non-recognition.
In October the population started to feel the increasing negative phenomena in Belarusian economy, which was expressed in particular in active conversion of ruble deposits to currency ones. September inflation turned out to be record-breaking, too - 1.6%.

IISEPS executive board

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