Unification on Started? :: Charter'97 :: News

A working meeting on coordination of actions of the democratic forces took part in Minsk today. At the meeting the agreement on coordination of actions in struggle with elections falsifications was confirmed. The decision was made to join forces in nomination of opposition representatives to election committees and in establishing independent monitoring. At the next meeting, which is to take place on March 13, human resources of the democratic forces are to be analyzed. A technical group is to be formed to coordinate actions in these areas.

“It is excellent that our colleagues from democratic opposition at last paid attention to the appeals of the European Coalition, BSDP (NH), parliamentary group Respublika, youth organizations, and started a practical work on coordination of our actions. We hope that collective work would result in a stronger union of the democratic forces during imminent elections,” was the comment by Mikola Statkevich, chairman of the Social Democratic party (Narodnaya Hramada) coordinator of the European coalition “Free Belarus” on the results of the working meeting to the Charter’97 press center.

Anatol Lyabedzka, one of the leaders of the People’s coalition “Five Plus”, chairman of the United Civil Party, pointed out:

“We are satisfied with the working meeting on coordination of democratic forces’ actions. Little deeds are better than fine, pompous words for us. We managed to find points of common interests, and today’s meeting was dedicated to the selection of opposition candidates to election committees and establishing of independent observation. We have concrete agreements in these two spheres. In two weeks we are to present our human resources, and in a month we are to speak about candidates in constituency election committees. We cannot start common list of candidates because of different degree of preparedness. In general, as we are one of the main initiators of the democratic forces’ union, we support everything which promotes union”.

The results of the meeting were commented by member of the European coalition “Free Belarus”, leader of the youth organization “Volat” (town of Barysaw) Dzmitser Barodka:

“It was very interesting for me, as a representative of the regions, to take part in this meeting. Opposition activists in regions have been waiting for some steps towards closing in of their leaders’ positions for a long time. To my mind, central leadership of some parties is not acting energetically in this direction still. The regions are waiting for a lot more. But the fact itself that the process of talks has started is a very positive one. It gives hope to us that we shall set out as a single force before the elections”.