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Mahilyow Regional Court upholds denial of registration as candidate for Mahilyow City Soviet for local civil society activist

The Mahilyow Regional Court on March 6 upheld the decision by the Mahilyow City Election Commission and the Mahilyow Regional Election Commission to deny registration a candidate in the March 23 local elections for civil society activist Alyaksandr Khamrataw.

As Mr. Khamrataw told BelaPAN, in mid-February, the Mahilyow City Election Commission denied him registration as a candidate for the Mahilyow City Soviet under the pretext that some of the people who had given their signatures for his nomination did not reside in the electoral district.

Mr. Khamrataw appealed the decision to the Mahilyow Regional Election Commission, but the commission left it unchanged.

"I argued that citizens’ place of residence should not necessarily be the same as their place of registration," Mr. Khamrataw said. "Regulations require people to indicate their place of residence, not their place of registration."

According to Mr. Khamrataw, the Mahilyow Regional Election Commission did not have evidence that people who had given their signatures for his nomination did not live in the district in question although they were not registered residents.

"They also said that 15 percent of the signatures were invalid. I counted that such signatures made up 14.6 percent," Mr. Khamrataw noted.

However, representatives of the election commission claimed at the hearing that 19.2 percent of the signatures were invalid.

Mr. Khamrataw, said that he would not appeal the Mahilyow Regional Court’s ruling because it would be too late for him to run in the elections if the decision was reversed.