Mahileu affiliates of opposition parties to be evicted from their offices

Affiliates of opposition parties are threatened the loss of their legal addresses. Members of the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (Hramada) and the Belarusian Communist Party will land on the street level on January 2008. Liberals are lucky – they will be evicted by the end of summer.

That’s what the head of Mahileu regional affiliate of the United Civil Party Uladzimir Shantsau said in his interview with ERB:

“They have prolonged our leasing contract till July. Speaking about social democrats, their lease will not be extended. The same thing will happen to communists… As far as I understand, the elections are approaching and they simply want to deprive us of our legal addresses”.

Valery Uhnalyou, deputy head of CPB, shares the same opinion. According to him, the party’s affiliate has been registered in the office it is being evicted from since 1992 and “there used to be no problems”.

Now there are problems and not only in Mahileu but also in Hrodna and Vitsebsk. But Uhnalayou thinks that opposition affiliates will have a much harder time surviving in spring:

“The lower rent coefficient for political parties and civil organizations will be cancelled in April. So we will have to pay 10 times more for the offices we have now. And they are trying to evict us even from these offices”.