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Organizer of People’s Referendum campaign says that 500,000 signatures are impossible to dismiss

The organizers of the People’s Referendum campaign plan to collect 500,000 signatures, a number that will be simply impossible to dismiss, Alyaksey Yanukevich, chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front, told reporters in Minsk on Wednesday.

“Five hundred thousand signatures means a change in public sentiments and cannot simply be brushed aside,” Mr. Yanukevich said. “This is a mechanism of pressure, authorities will have to react.”

He noted that the organizers of the campaign were planning to use March’s local elections to gather at least 50,000 signatures and submit them to the House of Representatives.

Valery Fralow, deputy chairman of the Hramada Belarusian Social Democratic Party, predicted that the House of Representatives would refuse to call a "people’s referendum" at the request of voters. Nevertheless, its response will clearly show “who was elected” to the lower parliamentary chamber, he said.

Mr. Fralow expressed confidence that the People’s Referendum campaign would make the participating organizations more popular. People will be able to see that they are dealing with specific problems, he explained.

According to Mr. Yanukevich, every two months, activists of the campaign will focus on one of the six referendum issues. They will pay particular attention to the need to elect local authorities in February and March, to educational and healthcare issues in April and May, to relations with the European Union in June and July, to Belarus’ neutral status in August and September, to the distribution of privatization revenues in October and November, and to the need to reestablish a two-term limit on the presidency in December 2014 and January 2015, Mr. Yanukevich said.

As many as 50,000 valid voter signatures are needed to initiate a nationwide referendum in Belarus. The House of Representatives decides whether or not to call referendums at the request of voters. If 450,000 signatures or more are submitted to the lower parliamentary chamber, it is constitutionally required to call a referendum.

On May 20, 2013, the “Tell the Truth!” movement, the Movement for Freedom and the Belarusian Popular Front announced that they had reached an agreement on long-term strategic partnership and would cooperate during the next local, presidential and parliamentary elections at the very least and hold the people’s referendum. The three organizations were later joined by the Hramada Belarusian Social Democratic Party, the Party of Freedom and Progress and an opposition group called Alternatyva. //BelaPAN