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Leaders of some opposition parties, groups say that they achieved their goals in parliamentary elections

 

Leaders of some opposition parties and groups said on Sunday that they had achieved their goals in the September 18-23 elections for the House of Representatives.

While talking to reporters in Minsk, Valery Ukhnalyow, deputy chairman of the "Spravedlivy Mir" (Just World) Belarusian Party of the Left, said that the organization was aware that there is an "electoral campaign rather than an election" in the country. "We built our strategy and tactics in the electoral campaign based on that," he said.

"We managed to use all, even if limited, opportunities that we had during the electoral campaign. There are no such opportunities in everyday work," Mr. Ukhnalyow said.

"We came to people, we told them what we want, we showed them that we exist, we spoke about how we see our country's future and said how we plan to achieve that," the politician said.

Yury Hubarevich, deputy chairman of the Movement for Freedom, said that opposition candidates and their campaign aides had been given a total of six hours of television airtime and four hours of radio airtime ahead of the elections. The state-owned newspapers that published opposition candidates' election platforms have a total print run of 1.5 million copies, he said, adding that roughly as many leaflets had been distributed by opposition parliamentary hopefuls.

"We mentioned political prisoners in our campaigning," Mr. Hubarevich said.

He said that the opposition camp would have achieved more during the electoral campaign if "one part of the opposition had not boycotted the other part of the opposition."

Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, leader of the "Tell the Truth!" movement and a former presidential candidate, said that the parliamentary elections had helped the opposition camp discover new leaders in the provinces. // BelaPAN