Siarhei Balykin: Belarusan authorities are at the mercy of Soviet stereotypes

Mobilization of investors to Belarus is hampered by uncertainty, instability and unpredictability present in the political, economic and legal spheres of the country.

 This opinion was shared to the EuroBelarus Information Service by the lawyer and economist Siarhei Balykin.

“First of all, it is absolutely unclear what will become of our country, what are the perspectives. Let’s say it openly that the existence of the Republic of Belarus, the existence of the current regime in Belarus is much connected with the figure of the Belarusan leader. And if we take stability, predictability and relevance, they depend only on whether this person is in power, is he alive, what is his state of health and so on”, - noted the expert.

According to him, not everything is well with our economics, too: “There are lots of problems in the monetary and credit sphere, in the relations between the subjects of management, problems with the nation status and manpower leaving abroad, the potential instability of the Belarusan ruble. And it is unclear when will all these problems come out”.

He also paid attention that the economic legislation in Belarus is unpredictable and changes constantly: “Most crucial is that it can change all of a sudden, and living conditions can worsen in several days to such a degree that in would be just impossible to work in some spheres. I believe everyone has already understood that. Remember struggling against brokers; remember all our re-registrations, a recent Decree on combating “one-day firms”.

“It is this unpredictability and uncertainty that scares serious investors”, - believes Siarhei Balykin.

According to him, it is rather difficult to estimate time necessary to create suitable investable conditions in Belarus: “The adoption of the suitable legislation is the question of several months. The date when investors start believing us is the question of months or, perhaps, years. And the answer to the question whether we will actually have stabile and transparent political system is unknown”.

He assumes that in the first place the problem of creating conditions is of a political character, as “our leaders do not have political will to the reforms”.

In Siarhei Balykin’s judgment, history contains lots of examples when authoritarian political regimes achieved great success in economics: “Remember at least Chili during the Pinochet governing. There was effective economics and for all this repression of trade unions, communists and others took place”.

Similar examples are Northern Korea and Singapore that are heading towards democracy; countries, which during the times of the strong economic growth were notable for the authoritarianism of the political regime.

“There are lots of such examples in the Southeastern Asia and in the Latin America. If we look back in history, then we will find such examples in Europe, too”, - noted Siarhei Balykin.

Why doesn’t Belarus keep to the beaten and quite well examined track?

“First, because of the lack of education of the Belarusan authorities who are at the mercy of Soviet stereotypes. And these stereotypes are driven nearly into the spinal cord, - the expert assumes. – And secondly, the authorities understand that giving certain economic freedom, in the long run we should have political freedom as well. Finally, the development of the market economy inevitably leads to the democratic changes, either evolutional or revolutionary. The development of the capitalism has just brought to the development of the civil society, democracy and civil liberties”.