Yarmoshyna compares Belarusian police with Mother Teresa

According to the Central Election Commission chairperson, policemen were “extremely tactful and tolerant” to initiative groups of the presidential aspirants.

“In the period of signatures collection the agencies of the Interior Affairs Ministry have showed a good job, a high class. They acted with oppositional groups as Mother Theresa,” Yarmoshyna said at a press-conference in Minsk.

As said by her, all the conflicts were “resolved on-the-spot”. “Rights of citizens were defended completely – both of those who were collecting signatures, as well as usual voters,” the CEC chair underlined.

Though the overall background of the collection of signatures for the presidential candidates was more liberal than usual, which is related to the desire of the Belarusian authorities to create a “picture” for the West, members of initiative groups nevertheless underwent repressions. Thus, in the most crucial moment, on the days when signatures were to be submitted to election commissions, policemen held a search in the flat of Yauhen Afnagel, the campaign chief of Andrei Sannikov. Then Afnagel and his wife were interrogated for more than 3 hours. There were occasions when oppositionists were detained during the pickets and they were fired from job.