It will be easier to collect signatures for bandidates, official says

The central election commission plans to change rules governing local elections to make it easier for candidates to campaign and collect voter signatures, secretary Mikalay Lazavik told ERB.  

"The technical candidate nomination procedures and campaign rules will be liberalized and simplified. Specific changes will deal with nomination, i.e. the collection of signatures. Fewer bureaucratic procedures will be needed to certify signatures," Lazavik said.

 

The next local elections will take place in Belarus in April 2010 months before the presidential election. Local and foreign observers see the elections as a test of the government's willingness to carry out democratic reform.