English

Lukashenka’s dismissals at Barysawdrew testify to failure of his authoritarian modernization

By Valery Karbalevich, of the Stratehiya think tank Alyaksandr Lukashenka dismissed the head of the Minsk Regional Executive Committee and other high-ranking officials following his November 8 visit to AAT Barysawdrew, a woodworking company in Barysaw, Minsk region. The Belarusian leader’s punitive measures testify to failures of the government’s effort to modernize woodworking plants and expose shortcomings of his command system.

The government adopted a two-year plan to upgrade nine woodworking companies back in 2007, releasing more than €800 million in low-interest loans for the effort. However, the modernization has not been completed, with the Belarusian State Timber, Woodworking, Pulp and Paper Industries Concern (Bellespaperapram) reporting that its companies’ losses to soar 30-fold in 2011.

A year ago, Lukashenka inspected a couple of woodworking companies, firing Bellespaperpram head Uladzimir Shulha and replacing him with Alyaksandr Peraslawtsaw.

After inspecting Barysawdrew on November, 30, 2012, the Belarusian leader ordered measures to tighten discipline and prohibited woodworking industry workers from quitting their jobs before the end of modernization. On June 15, he offered €214 million in new loans to woodworking companies to complete modernization before November 7.

He went to Barysaw on November 8 only to discover that his orders had not been fulfilled.

“The woodworking modernization project has failed… We have wasted millions of dollars on it,” Lukashenka said. He dismissed Bellespaperapram head Peraslawtsaw.

The program has failed despite the Belarusian leader’s resolute intervention. The government’s industrial modernization also seems to have been struggling or has been abandoned because officials and state-controlled media have never reported on its progress in the last few months.

Even if dismissals and criminal cases against woodworking industry executives helped complete the upgrade, woodworking companies might discover that there is no market for their products. After Lukashenka launched the modernization drive, officials and industry executives might have filed to conduct proper market research because the upgrade order came from the head of state and no one dared to discuss it.

Another lesson that can be learned from the woodworking story is that personnel reshuffles produce little effect. The Lukashenka administration personnel selection policies over the last 20 years resulted in a severe shortage of good managers.

Lukashenka directed the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Control Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to institute criminal proceedings in connection with mismanagement and negligence discovered at Barysawdrew and bring criminal charges against those responsible. He seems to face the dilemma: either to abandon his command methods or employ harsher GULAG-style punishment.

“If there is the slightest suspicion,” bring criminal charges against everyone deemed responsible for mismanagement and negligence, including, dismissed regional government head Barys Batura, Peraslawtsaw, First Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Syamashka and Mikalay Busalaw, director general of a construction company responsible for construction work at the woodworking plant, Lukashenka said on November 8.

The Belarusian ruler was outraged at the sight of heaps of construction waste, dismissing Andrey Tur, deputy head of the Presidential Administration, for failure to properly prepare the plant for his “working visit.”

Officials’ neglectful attitude is a sign that Lukashenka’s hysterical high-handed style no longer inspires awe. //BelaPAN