With mass protests and arrests of opposition has begun in Belarus the presidential campaign. In the case of a signature collection for new, additional competitors were taken on Sunday in the capital Minsk, some of them fixed. The authorities had previously denied a registration.

55 candidates, as many as never before, submitted to the Central election Commission an application on participation in the elections on may 9. August. However, only 15 groups were recorded. Until the beginning of July, you need to collect at least 100,000 signatures in order for your candidate is allowed to compete in the elections.

As first declared incumbent Alexander Lukashenko already 200,000 supporters to have won. The head of state for almost 26 years and wants to remain in office. Among its best-known competitors, the former head of the Bank "Belgazprombank" Viktor Babariko, and the former head of the white Russian IT-Hubs "Hi-Tech Park," Valery Zepkalo are.

bloggers Tichanowskij - new face of the election campaign

the opposition video blogger Sergei Tichanowskij wanted to run, but his grouping did not get any approval. The 41-year-old entrepreneur runs the popular YouTube channel "Strana dlja zhizni" (Life in Europe) with over 200,000 subscribers. On 6. In may, he was detained for 15 days because he had participated in the December 2019, in protests that were directed against a greater approach of his country to Russia.

After his arrest, the Blogger in a Video, said on his channel that he wanted to compete in the upcoming presidential election. His subscribers would have asked him to nominate himself. After the prohibition of the candidacy, decided to Tichanowskij to support his wife as a presidential candidate.

"In the election campaign, my wife, I'm going to play the main role, and the role of Svetlana Tichanowskaja will be nominal. I'm going to stick with the choice, together with a Team and colleagues to belong to Nikolai Statkevich, Pavel Severinets, and some of the other bloggers," he told DW.

this Time, not just supers

Katerina Schmatina from the Belarusian Institute for strategic studies (BISS) finds that the possible future candidates for the presidential election campaign interesting. "In the previous elections, there were among the candidates, no Surprises," she said to the DW. Runner "supers are the government" and individual members of the opposition. Now, there are candidates such as Babariko or Zepkalo, which would arrive in a part of the moderate electorate.

"extras" referred to Schmatina the head of the Liberal democratic party, the Parliament Deputy Oleg Gajdukewitsch. He surprisingly dropped out of the election campaign and to vote for Lukashenko as the "only guarantor of the unity of the country".

surveys Online show enjoy Trend

How much support Lukashenko, and the new potential candidates, to ensure, among other things, results of Online suggest voting on websites of independent media. Lukashenko came to a maximum of six percent.

The bad result of reason that in Belarus such votes are now prohibited by the Belarusian newspaper "Nasha Niva", according to. The authorities have classed it as representative surveys on socio-political topics and is accredited by the Institute of sociology of the Academy of Sciences is necessary.

Andrei Wardomazkij, the guides to know a Thinktank Russia in Warsaw, said the DW, sociologists would Online mock polls because of its methodological inaccuracies, actually. But, as the candidates Babariko, Zepkalo, and Tichanowskaja at the beginning of the election campaign, reached peak values were a threat to Lukashenko's importance. "These votes reflect in a very exaggerated Form, the popularity of values", so Wardomazkij.

He regrets that Belarus studies mood among the people are currently as good as impossible. Wardomazkij assumes that the difficult economic situation and the Situation around the corona virus, the danger had denied President Lukashenko a long time, have changed the white Russian society a few months before the elections. "The economic situation is explosive, and the eruption of the Corona pandemic, acts as a fuse", said the expert.

warning: violence

Also, political analyst Alexander Feduta, who in 1994 was part of the Wahlstabs of Lukaschenks campaign, believes that the white Russians, with the government increasingly dissatisfied. For him, it is clear that Lukashenko is preparing for a possible violent action. "The have shown, the criminal case against the Blogger, Sergei Tichanowskij, as well as the arrest of 15 activists," according to Feduta.

By the parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE criticism was already. "We are very concerned that the detention of prominent disabled enter political activists only the work of potential campaigns, but also have a deterrent effect on society," reads a statement by the Chairman of the Committee for human rights of the parliamentary Assembly, Kyriakos Hadjiyianni.

author: Alexandra Boguslawskaja (mo)

*The contribution of "white Russia before the exciting elections" published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.

Deutsche Welle

Date Of Update: 09 June 2020, 09:26