Economist: A Hunger Riot May Start in Belarus

The usurper is about to crash the economy.

On Tuesday, November 10, at a meeting with the head of the Federation of Trade Unions, Mikhail Orda, Aliaksandr Lukashenka threatened to liquidate private companies in which trade unions would not appear by the end of the year.

The tut.by portal asked Lev Lvovskiy, a senior researcher at BEROC, to comment on this statement:

- Lukashenka no longer argues whether the business is profitable or not, what our rates of inflation and GDP growth are, but first of all, he says that the main thing for business is that it should not protest. Business must agree with the new ideology: it should not react in any way to changes in society, violence, and torture, but should only engage in business. Which, of course, does not work, because we live in a society, and businessmen, like everyone else, see how AMAP officers beat people, including their employees, - says Lev Lvovsky. The new proposal of Aliaksandr Lukashenka regarding trade unions should probably be read in the same vein.

The expert recalls that there are trade unions in many countries, and, in itself, the proposal to create them in organizations does not imply anything bad.

"But in other countries, trade unions are spoken of primarily as structures that should help workers defend their rights. In this case, Aliaksandr Lukashenka talks about the trade union and does not mention workers but immediately links the refusal to create it with the business's liquidation. From this, we can conclude that we are hardly talking about some kind of economic proposals and the desire to improve workers' conditions. This is an element of intimidation. If the choice is between a trade union or liquidation, it is likely that the trade unions will act as a representative of the state at the enterprise, perform the function of some kind of alternative controlling apparatus, Lev Lvovskiy believes. - Moreover, it is not yet clear how exactly it is supposed to create trade unions in all private organizations. This is voluntary under the current legislation; there are currently no laws or decrees that would change this.

According to Lev Lvovsky, some organizations can go to the formal creation of trade unions. But it will not be possible to eliminate all those who refused to do so, the expert believes.

- In theory, of course, everything can be eliminated, but this will not happen because this will entail huge changes, including political ones, for which no one is ready. In private business, we have half of the jobs; it creates a huge share of GDP, pays salaries, and taxes to the budget. Now the Belarusian protest is not a hunger riot. Economic factors also play a role, but the protesters' main demands do not lie in the economic plane; they can be called political, social, and humanitarian. But if the economy collapses so sharply, then a hunger riot may start, - the expert says.