English

Milinkevich gives up presidential bid

Alyaksandr Milinkevich, leader of the Movement for Freedom, announced on Friday that he would not run in Belarus’ presidential race as no changes had been made to national electoral regulations to ensure fair, free and open elections, as quoted by BelaPAN.

The Movement for Freedom was pushing for amendments to the Electoral Code, but to no avail, the politician, who was a candidate in the 2006 presidential election, said at a news conference held in Minsk on Friday.

“We applied to the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament for assistance in ensuring that representatives of independent presidential candidates are allowed to count votes together with members of election commissions,” Mr. Milinkevich said. “Besides, we maintained correspondence about the matter with the parliament. But after the date of the election was set, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, head of the central election commission, announced that no amendments would be introduced to regulations."

“We have no elections, we only have an election campaign,” Mr. Milinkevich said.

The politician denied plans to call for the boycott of the election, noting that he would throw his support behind a “Belarusian Choice” campaign consolidating the Movement for Freedom, the Belarusian Popular Front, the Belarusian Party of the Greens and presidential aspirant Ales Mikhalevich’s Union For Modernization.

Mr. Milinkevich announced his presidential bid in early May. In the 2006 presidential election, he was the candidate of a broad opposition coalition and gained 6.1 percent of the vote, according to the central election commission. Alyaksandr Lukashenka was declared the winner with 83 percent.