The analysis shows that 40 percent of the country’s 1,409,780 Internet users are governmental officials. Around 14 percent of Belarusians are now online, with a bias towards younger and urban users. Meanwhile, 68 (out of about 200, or almost one third) of the Belarusian governmental institutions have their own websites. Belarusian legislators, as of October 2004, had launched five sites: the upper chamber of the parliament (the Council of the Republic), the lower chamber (House of Representatives), a deputy group at the lower chamber Respublika, and two personal webpages of deputies.
70 percent of governmental websites represent national bodies and 30 percent represent regional and local administrations. The majority of these websites give thematically organized content that duplicates offline information. Only 6 percent of websites present some specific information accessible only online. 56 percent give only minimal information making it possible to contact government officials via telephone or ordinary mail. Only 3 percent of websites make governmental bodies more accessible and 4 percent provide some online services. The analysis notes that Internet potential is not yet used fully to bridge the gap between citizens and governmental institutions. However government institutions are better represented online than political parties and NGOs.
Of the 18 officially registered political parties in Belarus only seven have websites. Belarusian parliamentary elections in October 2004 saw some use of the Internet. 199 parliamentary candidates set up websites, and two initiated online forums. Two further candidates referred to their personal websites during their election campaigns. However, no political party in Belarus pursued a consistent online election campaign strategy and, generally, Belarusian political party websites provided minimal information about a few of their MP candidates.
In the meantime, hosts of political websites in Belarus remain at risk of censorship. DMEurope.com reports that authorities in the town of Grodno recently closed an Internet forum with 2000 regular users that regularly criticised President Alexandr Lukaschenko. An employee of the Beltelecom telephone company who oversaw the hosting of the forum was sacked.
Information from this report has been derived from e-Belarus.org.
Quelle: e-Forum, 22.03.2005
