Sannikov met with the board of CIS Observation Mission

The leader of the civil campaign “European Belarus” became the first candidate for presidency, whom the representatives of CIS Observation Mission met with.

On December, 1 a meeting of the candidate for presidency Andrei Sannikov with the head of his headquarters Uladzimir Kobets and the Deputy Head of CIS Observation Mission headquaters Yauhen Slabada took place, website “European Belarus” reports.

During the meeting the current stage of the election campaign was discussed.

Yauhen Slabada said, that 249 observers are working in the country, and their quantity will be increased up to 340-350 people. There are also 41 long-term observers of the CIS mission working in Belarus.

As Slabada said, the CIS Observation Mission is monitoring the situation with information layout of candidates’ programs in the state media. The mission plans to visit all regions of Belarus. For the moment the observers have been in about half of them. Special attention is paid to the problem of the early voting, as well as voting on closed polling stations.

Andrei Sannikov and the head of his headquarters informed the board of the CIS mission about the election campaign process. It was stated, that despite relative liberalization of the process during the signature collecting campaign, there are still serious problems during the agitation campaign. In particular, it was said that the day before the newspaper “Vitsebsky Rabochy” refused to place the program of Andrei Sannikov. In many cities of the country places, provided for agitation, are situated in solitary places on the outskirts.

Uladzimir Kobets also said that there is a problem with the spread of print material in the regions where, unlike Minsk, designated areas are few and uncomfortable, or are absent at all. Also he noted the correlation of the broadcast time, provided to the Belarusian dictator and the opposition candidates. Moreover, the representative of the CIS Observation Mission was told about the pressure, put on the members of Andrei Sannikov headquarters – about dismissal of volunteers, threats in educational establishments, detentions and politically motivated criminal cases, about outrageous incident in Babruysk, when Ludmila Ruban was threatened by the deprivation of parental rights for adopted children, if she continued to collect signatures to nominate Andrei Sannikov.

Slabada stated that the mission is aware of the problems raised at the discussion. Special attention was drawn to the problem of providing observation during the early voting process. As it is known, at yesterday meeting the CEC refused to allow round-the-clock monitoring of the ballot boxes during the early voting process.