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   IISEPS Bulletins
E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 3, 2011 - ISSN 1822-5578 (only Russian)

Content:

Introduction
1. Basic trends of March
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. Four strategies

3.2. The party messenger

4. Economics
4.1. On the eve of a crucial decision

4.2. A locomotive on the illegal earnings

4.3. Heels in, toes out

5. Finances
5.1. Old words about the main thing

6. Good news
7. Our forecast for April
8. From the IISEPS desktop



Introduction:

Dear readers!

Fully in accordance with our forecast, no political improvement of relations occurred during the first spring month. The judicial conveyor continued its work. An attempt of the opposition to observe "The Freedom Day" was completed in Minsk by mass arrests. The Supreme Economic Court had originally nullified the decision concerning going off air of the "Autoradio" station, and then having become frightened by its own audacity, revoked it. In March the Russian human rights advocate, head of the International observation mission of the Committee of the international control of the human rights situation in Belarus, A. Yurov was arrested and deported, and the organizing committee of the conference "The role and place of the civil society in the strategy of the future" did not manage to find premises in Minsk for holding the conference.
The foreign-policy confrontation also continued. The EU published an additional list of the Belarusian officials barred entry to the territory of the European Union. The USA imposed sanctions on the production association "Belorus-neft" for collaboration with the Iranian NaftIran Intertrade Company. The USA Senate unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the presidential elections in Belarus in December, 2010 as illegitimate, and urged the Belarusian authorities to release all the political prisoners. In response they compiled their own list of the banned western politicians in the depths of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The main results of another IISEPS opinion poll proved to be predictable, too. The presidential elections had passed, but the anxious expectations in the society had not disappeared, what was registered by the social indices. The electoral rating of the "only Belarusian politician" did not remain indifferent to what was going on, either. For three months it has decreased by 10.1 points. In 2006 the decrease rate was almost two times less.
Just as we had supposed, the Belarusian society became split as regards the repressions. The pro-Lukashenko "majority" (78.1%) approved of the mass arrests on December, 19 in a consolidated manner. There were also people among the "minority" who approved of the arrests, however considerably fewer - 13.6%. As they say it, black sheep occur in all families. Almost two thirds of the "majority" representatives (66.3%) believed that the opposition had been plotting a coup d'etat. Only 18.9% among the "minority" shared the same view on the December events.
Our economic forecast was fully confirmed, too. Prices continued their growth; the merchandise trade negative balance doubled having come close to the $ 2 bln mark. As for the desire of the citizens to exchange the Belarusian rubles for the ideologically alien dollars, it has exceeded our expectations. We expected a banal growth in currency purchasing, but the citizens rushed to assault exchange offices. The buying fever soon ceased, however the National bank was not the one to blame in that case. The exchange offices simply ran out of currency.
The situation with housing construction somewhat improved in February, but the quarterly result is likely to be negative. Thus, the first quarter of the current year is going to continue the tendency which became apparent in the second half of 2010. One of the locomotives of the "Belarusian economic model", judging by the data of the "Belstat", has turned off the arterial highway to the side-tracks.

IISEPS executive board

Complete version see Here »»

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