Belarusian opposition to appeal to authorities over election

Belarusian opposition parties and social movements will launch an appeal to the authorities over the presidential elections to be held this year. It is about the way that elections can be made "relatively free and fair". Euroradio learnt about it from the chairman of the Belarusian left party "Fair World" Syarhei Kalyakin:

"There is not much to be changed. It is necessary to allow the opposition into the election commissions and to conduct an open vote count, when those present, including commissions, representatives of the opposition, the journalists, observers (both national and international) see that vote count and understand how the announced results are obtained. Today, we have nothing of this."

According to the leader of "Fair World", among the political parties and movements which signed the appeal are the BPF, campaign Tell the Truth, UCP, Movement For Freedom, the Belarusian Christian party, the Belarusian Workers Party, the Green Party, the female Hope Party (Nadzeya), the Belarusian Social Democratic Party Hramada and several others.

Kalyakin believes that the government could hold a "civil dialogue" on the issue of rapidly approaching elections "to publicly discuss why there are no elections in our country". Politicians do not rule out that the CEC could do it. If the authorities responded to the proposals of the opposition, the situation would have been different. In the meantime, said Syarhei Kalyakin, "the authorities playing with marked cards, solve their problems and want to hide behind participation of the opposition".

Incidentally, the opposition prepared the same text last past year, but the authorities left it unnoticed.

The presidential elections in Belarus are scheduled for November 2015.

Photo: Fotolia