Mass withdrawal of opposition from elections in Brest

In Brest alternative candidates keep withdrawing from elections.

On 5 March another 11 people left the electoral race for the city council.

Euroradio previously reported that on 3 March it came out that eight candidates had withdrawn. This was announced at a session of the city territorial electoral commission.

In the opinion of an independent observer Uladzimir Vialichkin, all the 19 former candidates originally did not want to participate in the “elections” and now they are looking for various reasons to quit.

“They explain the reluctance to participate in the elections with family issues, some – with workload, some – with relocation to another place of residence. Many of them tell the commission that as they were going for the elections, they thought it would “as usual”. It turned out that a radio speech needs to be prepared, accounts opened for publishing campaign materials, which is a large amount of work”, - Uladzimir Vialichkin claimed.

Another person was withdrawn from the race by the electoral commission due to inaccurate data in the income declaration. Currently 102 people keep running for Brest city council.

Uladzimir Vialichkin assumes that before the “elections” start some of Brest’s 40 constituencies may turn into a one-man-for-one-seat race, since the local democratic community was not able to nominate their representatives in all the constituencies.

Photo: Radio Svaboda