Central Election Committee afraid of boycott

“By ignoring the elections, political parties refuse to fulfil their main aim – taking power,” Mikalai Lazavik, head of the Central Election Committee, said in an interview to BelaPAN.

“The aim of any political party is taking and exercise of power. It is the politological truth,” he emphasised.

According to him, “power can be gained only through elections, other ways are unlawful.” “So if political parties don’t run for elections, boycott them, they abandon their main purpose,” the head of the Central Election Committee noted.

M. Lazavik also thinks “if the opposition shows a united front at the elections, this variant would be more profitable for it. “But the experience shows the statements of unity are active on the stage of preparation for nomination, but later other principles work: disunity and un-cooperation. Though I didn’t analyse deeply the relations between the political parties, but, in my view, they do not have enough unity to stand together at the elections,” he noted.

Parliamentary “elections” are to be held in Belarus in autumn 2008. Due to tightening of political repressions in the country, unwillingness of the authorities to liberalise the electoral laws, and the fact all elections and referendums in Belarus are considered by the internatio0nal organisations to be unfree and non-democratic since 1996, figures of the civil society have called on the democratic forces to boycott the elections.