Radio Svaboda: Weird ”election”

In the Belarusian regions the agitation campaign is hardly visible. Electoral pickets are not a usual sight in the streets.

People attend meetings with candidates without enthusiasm. Many opposition candidates explain this with obstacles created by the local powers, Radio Svaboda reports.

In Grodna, in one night all 50 posters of Dzmitry Bandarchuk, the candidate from Zaniomanski electoral district Nr 49 of Grodna supported by the public campaign Tell the Truth, disappeared from the advertising pillars assigned by the district electoral commission.

Desperate Bandarchuk says he doesn’t know what to do – whether to use the rest of the posters now or to leave them for electoral stations, to allow voters see his picture and read his biography at least on the voting day.

“The district commission tells me that they didn’t order to take away the posters. I’ll report to the police. It can’t be just a bad luck that 25 pillars were cleaned in one night,” Bandarchuk said.

Yury Istomin, a United Civil Party candidate from Grodna’s Paunochny electoral district, says that in the district the electoral pickets are literally held on dog playgrounds.

He says that unlike a certain candidate from the powers, he cannot meet with employees of the local enterprises, although he has submitted a request for such meetings.

“I sent letters to employees organization, and now they start to reply that they cannot meet on the suggested days, or that there are other obstacles. Basically the right to meet with employees of local enterprises has been taken from me. And the candidate from the powers meets with them. I know that he has been speaking at parental meetings in schools and in other places.”

Editor of the district paper Maiak of the town of Biarozy Aliaksandar Ivanou refused to publish the text of deputy candidate Valiantsin Lazarenkau. However, he changed his mind after a claim had been submitted to the district electoral commission.

Valiantsin Lazarenkau from the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (Gramada) is a candidate from Ivatsevichy electoral district Nr 11, which belongs both to Ivatsevichy district and Biaroza district with the town of Bielaaziorsk. The candidate told that the Biaroza local paper refused to publish his text.

“I talked to Ivanou, the head of the district paper. He explained that he cannot publish the materials because, for example, I mention a situation when residents of one building have to sign that they won’t go out to their balconies because of a life threat. He said this information was false and suggested providing original documental proofs. I pointed to the fact that according to the Electoral code in such situation the owner of the text bears full responsibility for all possible inaccuracies, but he still refused to publish it without the documents.”

After the conversation with the editor of Biaroza’s local newspaper, Valiantsin Lazarenkau went to Ivatsevichy where he explained the situation to the secretary of the district electoral commission.

“She called the editor and told him that he violated the legislation and read the articles from the Electoral code to him. And the editor told her that he had been joking with me! What a lovely sense of humor…”

Valiantsin Lazarenkau says that because of the editor’s “joke” he had to travel around 100 km and lost several hours of his time.