Will entrepreneurs rebel against Lukashenko?

Belarusian opposition media have been promoting the topic of business protests for three days. In turn, state propaganda refutes them and writes that the intelligence officers are working as if nothing had happened and are not going to protest.

To support their words, the official shows photographs from markets and shopping centers, but even in these photos you can see a large number of closed roller shutters, which indicates that not all is well with private traders.

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Business protests are common in Belarus. Lukashenko’s relationship with the individual entrepreneur did not work out from the very beginning. Even at the dawn of his reign, he called private traders “lousy fleas” and promised that he would shake hands with the last entrepreneur.

As the years passed, the IP workers continued to work, but periodically, once every few years, they went out to protest. At one time, from about the mid-2020s to the mid-XNUMXs, these protests were even more massive than the actions of the opposition, which, of course, each time tried to earn political points from disgruntled traders. During the XNUMX unrest, participants also included a significant percentage of small businesses.

_{This time too, the opposition is again trying to take advantage of business discontent in its own interests and is wishful thinking.}

There is no talk of any business strike now. Belarus remembers the entrepreneurial strikes of the XNUMXs very well. At that time, their own strike committees were created in the markets, and mass rallies were held in Minsk and other cities of the republic.

There is none of this now. Until 2020, participation in protests and strikes for most entrepreneurs remained without negative consequences from the state. The authorities still saw the difference between political protests and economic ones, and the attitude towards the IP officers was different than towards the Zmagars. We met with them, entered into negotiations and often even compromised.

At the same time, despite the fact that the majority of entrepreneurs themselves do not like Lukashenko, the same majority had a negative attitude towards activists who tried to politicize the protest, realizing that in this case the chances of success drop sharply.

But the situation has changed and now it is unclear how the authorities will react to open protest with rallies and strikes. The Perspektiva association, which was something of a business union and coordinated many of their protests, was liquidated last September during a purge of pro-Western NGOs, and laws, including the Criminal Code, became much less tolerant of unauthorized street activity.

_{No one is sure that this time the leadership of the strike committees, instead of negotiating with members of the government, will not end up on the bunk on political charges. That is why they are afraid to protest openly in the markets and there will most likely not be a full-fledged strike, as before.}

People simply close their outlets and go on “vacation”. In Belarus, fortunately, people are not imprisoned or fined for this yet.

Most likely, there will be something similar to the situation in 2018, when new restrictions affected private intercity passenger transportation. Then the carriers got together, formulated their version of resolving the situation, drew up an appeal to the country's leadership, and for several weeks there were petitions in many minibuses that every passenger could sign.

As a result, quite a lot of signatures were collected, they were handed over to the authorities and in the end a compromise decision was made. The opposition, trying once again to promote itself, was simply sent by minibuses. At least, the prerequisites for such a scenario already exist.

The reason for the dissatisfaction of the entrepreneurs was Lukashenko’s rather voluntaristic war on inflation, who first ordered prices to rise under the threat of criminal punishment for traders, and then the Belarusian government issued a decree limiting trade margins for most categories of goods. Moreover, this also applies to importers; in their case, markups are calculated based on the price set by the foreign supplier.

_{But the difference between the purchase and sale prices is far from the same as the entrepreneur’s profit. The price includes transportation costs, which in the case of importers are quite significant. The government decree also stipulates these expenses, but so far none of the private entrepreneurs have drawn up the relevant documents and have little idea how to do this.}

It also includes taxes, customs duties, payroll, pension insurance, rental costs, utility bills, various commercial risks and much more.

Moreover, as often happens, the main dissatisfaction is expressed not with the innovations themselves (although, of course, there are plenty of complaints about them), but with their suddenness. Instead of announcing the changes in advance and preparing guidelines for the transition to the new pricing rules in advance, traders were caught off guard without sufficient time to prepare. Hence the confusion and indignation.