Many
countries are aiming at creation, development and promotion of their positive
image in the world. The same concerns Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is allegedly
seeking for assistance of the British Lord
Bell. The latter was a consultant to
Margaret Thatcher, Boris Berezovsky, government of
Saudi Arabia and the ex-Prime Minister of
Thailand. Will it be an easy job for Mr.
Bell? What do prominent Belarusian and foreign political technology experts
think about it?
The Head
of the Board of Directors of the famous Russian Centre of Political Consulting “Nikkolo
M”, Mr Igor Mintusov, who organized a
number of PR-campaigns in
Russia,
Mongolia,
Lithuania,
Nicaragua,
Poland and
USA, thinks, “Naturally,
it will be not just a hard task, but extremely hard task for Lord Bell. PR
technologies do not constitute panacea from all troubles and do not create
miracles in politics, the PR campaign has to be based on certain political activities.
In this situation, the solution to the problem would depend on real political
actions of the Belarusian authorities proving the PR-ideas Mr Tim Bell might
come up with”.
Belarusian
politician Ms Irina Bugrova,
believes, that “currently existing image of
Belarus is rather negative: image of a
closed space. There are many stereotypes in the internal and external policy one
needs to overcome. First of all, I would say, one has to overcome so called “crisis
of identification”. There shouldn’t be on one hand a controversial internal
self-identification and on the other hand, nice, pretty, sweet, white and
fluffy image from the outside.”
The Head
of the Lithuanian PR agency “No Recpect/Y&R”, Mr Paulius Senuta, currently working on the image “
Lithuania is a brave country” and who has
organized many rather successful PR-campaigns, admits, that “it will be hard
with
Belarus. I wouldn’t like to have this job.
You cannot fool anyone in today’s world. Perhaps, pensions were also increased somewhere
in
Bolivia … Have you heard about it? I haven’t.
It is so-called “insight – outlook”, i.e. “what is important for me for some
reason has to be important for everyone”… I believe Mr Bell will be able to
discuss this with Mr Lukashenko and they will find such tricks very interesting
for someone. However the bigger problem is that
Belarus is viewed as undemocratic country
by the rest of the world”.
Aleksandr Lukashenko while meeting with Lord Bell was
hinting and giving advises about what should be paid attention to. For
instance, pensions have been increased in the country. Will such arguments
work? Here is opinion of the Head of the Russian company “Niccolo M”, Mr Igor Mintusov.
“The society
abroad will react on other issues and other subjects, such as suppression of opposition
and existence of political prisoners… that is what it is conventionally reacting
to. It is not exactly correct to think that the increase of pensions might
change the image of
Belarus abroad”.
According
to a well-known Russian newspaper “The Moscow Times”, International organization
“Amnesty International” and British experts, improving image of Mr Lukashenko
will be the most complicated task in the career of the 66-year old PR-guru Lord
Bell. A politologist Ms Irina Bugrova thinks, that “there are certain
manipulative technologies available, however I do not think Mr Timothy Bell
would like benefit from them. Regardless of the money, reputation of the
image-maker is important as well”.
The
United Arab Emirates spend
around 5 % of their annual state budget on creating attractive image of the
country abroad. The
USA allocate USD
1 billion for these purposes. Russian authorities hire Western PR-agencies to
work on the country’s image. For instance, prior to the G8
Summit (in
St. Petersburg), the American
company Ketchum was working rather successfully on the image of
Russia.
By Ina Studzinskaya, Radio “
Liberty”
