Milinkevich gets final denial of registration

The Supreme Court of Belarus has delivered today a decision on complaint of For Freedom movement leader Alyaksandr Milinkevich, who was not registered as a parliamentary candidate.

Judge Valyantina Kulik did not find grounds to issue a decision in favour of Milinkevich over his complaint. The politician says it wasn't the end of the electoral campaign for him, Radio Svaboda reports.

Alyaksandr Milinkevich applied to the Supreme Court seeking for registration as a parliamentary candidate. It was his last opportunity to run for a seat in the parliament. Valyantina Kulik, a judge of the Supreme court, who by the way conducted the trial in Belarusian, did not find grounds to rule in favour of Milinkevich. The judge said claims to Milinkevich from the constituency election commission and the CEC had sufficient grounds.

The leader of For Freedom movement wanted to run in constituency No. 109 in Minsk. The Central Election Commission checked 350 signatures for his nomination and said 26% of them were invalid. The CEC refused to count valid the entries with wrong passport data, those with the date written not by a voter and signatures of people living outside constituency No. 9.

Yury Melyashkevich, the head of Milinkevich's initiative team, unsuccessfully tried to dispute these conclusions in the court.

Alyaksandr Milinkevich said after the trial he didn't expect another decision from the Supreme Court.