Will Police Rebel Against Lukashenka?

The financing of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been sharply reduced.

Every year the government of Belarus approves the draft of the republican budget for the next year – a detailed list of all the alleged revenues and expenditures of the state. Then this draft, as a rule, is revised, the figures are reviewed, but the final amounts of income and expenditure are still different from what was written in the draft normative legal acts. It's normal – you never know where there will be a force majeure that requires additional funding, and what you can save on, Your Country’s Tomorrow writes.

In 2016, there were no serious incidents: the state spent from the republican budget only 2.5% more than it had planned – the excess was very small. But at the same time, the state had to cut corners on six basic expenditure items out of ten. The most significant reduction was noted in the education (by 17.1%), but most of the funds for this purpose are spent from local budgets, so this figure alone does not say anything. The environmental protection was on the second place – well, under the conditions of total lack of money, the attempts of the authorities to save at least on this do not surprise. But the third anti-favorite of the authorities – the power bodies and courts – deserves special attention.

Over the past eight years, the actual expenditures of the budget on the internal affairs bodies have been less than planned only three times, of which two times were the crisis years 2015 and 2016, and one more time – the distant 2009.

Let's remember how it was. In 2009, the government planned to spend $ 360 million on the internal affairs bodies, but ultimately cut funding to 284 million, or more than 20%. In 2010, the next presidential elections were held. And lo and behold – in 2010, as much as 417.6 million dollars – by 14% more plan and by 47% more than a year earlier, were allocated to the internal affairs bodies.

And then it continued unabated. Neither in 2011, nor in 2012, nor in 2013, nor in 2014 the state allowed itself to save a dollar on the police. And the planned annual indicators more often grew, than reduced. The year 2014 appeared to be the "fattest", when the budget expenditures on the internal affairs bodies almost reached $ 500 million. But then the money supply to the security forces was sharply shut off: in 2015, the planned expenditures were cut by 26%, in 2016 – by another 9%. At that, every time the actual expenses were even less than the planned ones, and as a result in 2016, the police received 300 million – there was less only in 2009.

A similar situation has developed with the state security agencies: total savings in 2015 and 2016 after several "comfortable" years, and miserable $ 58 million in 2016, after record 98.7 million in 2014. The same situation has developed with the prosecutor's office, courts and prisons. The financing has utterly curtailed for all the power structures.