CEC registers nominating groups of Lukashenka, Kalyakin, Haydukevich

On the July 17 meeting, the Central Election Commission of Belarus reviewed the documents of three nominating groups of potential presidential candidate responsible for collecting signatures. The CEC unanimously registered the group of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. They also registered nominating groups of the Chairman of the Belarusian left party Fair World Syarhei Kalyakin (woman who did not have Belarusian citizenship was excluded from the list), the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus Syarhei Haidukevich (three people excluded - a citizen of Russia and two minors).

The documents to the CEC were filed by 10 nominating groups. The documents were submitted until 19.00.

Decisions on other groups will be passed by the CEC on Monday noon, July 20. According to the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, she thinks that only 5 nominating groups have chances. These are the three that have been registered, and 2 more that she did not mention. Ms Yarmoshyna said with confidence that the group of Mikalai Statkevich will not be registered. Violations were found in several other groups. For example, those who sent the documents by mail (for example, Syarhei Zablotski) do not have a chance to register.

Lidziya Yarmoshyna mentioned Tatstsiana Karatkevich and noted that female candidates will not receive any concessions. According to the Chairman of the CEC, the documents filed by Ms Karatkevich are "very different in quality from the documents provided by other women" (Iryna Pershyna and Zhanna Ramanouskaya). Besides, her group is larger than theirs.

Presidential elections in Belarus will be held on October 11.

Photo by Ales Piletski, Euroradio