Belarusians would like to hear their president speaking Belarusian – at least sometimes. This is the result of the recent opinion poll, conducted by the IISEPS polling institute.
29,7% of respondents believe that the president should always speak Belarusian in public. 34,1% believes, that the president should speak Belarusian at least sometimes. 34,3% believe that president doesn’t have to use the Belarusian language. Thus, 64% of Belarusians would like to hear at least some speeches of the president in Belarusian. The present Belarusian leader, however, never uses Belarusian language (nor do his ministers or the deputies of the parliament). Occasionally, he uses this or that Belarusian word, usually to mock his “nationalistic” political opponents.
Another IISEPS poll shows that more Belarusians tend to rely on the information provided by the independent mass media in Belarus than before. The situation with the state-owned mass media is totally different: less and less people in Belarus still trust them. The pollsters believe that this is connected with the general tendency of Belarusians to loose trust in state institutions and to trust more the institutions of civil society. For instance, the recent decision of the Belarusian government to sell Beltransgaz pipeline carrier to Russia is practically silenced by the Belarusian state-owned mass media. At the same time, 82% of Belarusians, according to the independent polls, disapprove of this move. Thus, the information manipulations in the state media becomes too obvious to be ignored even by those people, who have no active interest in politics.
