Executive committees against free elections

Local authorities deny oppositional activists a right to hold pickets “for free elections.”

On Monday evening the head of Minsk regional branch of the United Civil Party Artsyom Ahafonau has received a written denial for holding a picket from the chairman of Luban district executive committee Vasil Akulich. They wanted to hold a picket “For Free Elections without Lukashenka” in the capital of the district.

The executive committee explains their denial by failure of the request to comply with Articles 9 and 11 of the Law on Mass Events in Belarus, ucpb.org informs.

“As a matter of fact, it is an expectable answer, our pickets are like a burr in the saddle for the authorities. However, we are impressed that the executive committee has spared itself of looking for explanations for denial. For instance, the reference to the Article 9 of the Law is obviously inconsistent. I know Luban very well, and the site where the picket had been planned, has no signs of a place where holding of mass events is banned: it is just a spot in front of one of the town markets. There are no schools, hospitals or sensitive facilities there, the executive committee, the court and prosecutor’s office are situated in the other part of the town. There is no air, water or railway transport in the city at all, and the only transport facilities nearby are a bus station and a bus stop. But they are obviously more than 50 metres away. I thought they would be inventive, moreover, in 2008, when I stand in the parliamentary election to the chamber of representatives, I staged pickets there, and since then no decisions on the list of places banned for holding mass events had not been published by the executive committee,” Artsyom Ahafonau comments on the letter.

The salt zest of the situation is also in the fact that a few years ago Ahafonau occupied the position of the chief legal counsel of Luban district executive committee.