Freedom House: Belarus still has authoritarian regime

The American organization issued a report on democratic freedoms in nations in transit.

The Nations in Transit 2009 report ranked Belarus as a consolidated authoritarian regime among eight post-Soviet states, Radio Svaboda reports. This list includes Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

The average rating of democratic freedoms in Belarus in 2008 is 6.57. It is better that in four previous years, but the progress is not enough to remove it from the “consolidated authoritarian regimes” list.

Traditionally, Belarus ranks low in the scale democratic development estimated in seven categories: Electoral Process (6.75 for Belarus in 2009), civil society (6.25), independent media (6.75), national democratic governance (6.75), local democratic governance (6.75), judicial framework and independence (6.75), corruption (6.00).

According to Freedom House, a gap between the level of democratic freedoms in former Soviet authoritarian countries and Eastern Europe democratic countries increased in 2008.

For comparison, we offer scores of democratic freedoms of other countries, covered by the Freedom House survey: the Czech Republic (2.18), Estonia (1.93), Lithuania (2.29), Moldova (5.07), Poland (2.25), Ukraine (4.39), Latvia (2.18), Russia (6.11). Belarus outruns only Turkmenistan (6.93) and Uzbekistan (6.89).