MINSK - A financial crisis in Belarus, which has triggered two devaluations in its currency and caused soaring prices for staple goods, has pushed President Alexander Lukashenko's popularity ratings down to their lowest level, a survey showed on Monday.
Of the 1,503 Belarussians polled in September, only 20.5 percent would be prepared to vote for Lukashenko’s re-election now compared to the 53 percent recorded immediately after he won a fourth term in power in December, the survey showed.
"In other words, his ratings overall have fallen in nine months 2 1/2 times and have reached the lowest levels in the 17-year history of monitoring by the institute," the Independent Institute for Social-Economic and Political Research said in a statement.
The financial crisis set in last March fuelled, many economists say, by reckless pre-election spending late last year on public sector wages.
With dollars draining from the national reserves, the Belarussian rouble has been devalued twice this year by more than 60 percent in total, pushing prices up for staples of food and other goods.
Economists say that Lukashenko, who has been in power in the ex-Soviet republic since 1994, has to find $3 billion by the end of the year to prop up the heavily-indebted economy.
