It’s time to keep promises

Vital Rymasheusky calls opposition members to withdraw their candidacies from the "elections".

The co-chair of the organizing committee of the party "Belarusian Christian Democracy" appealed to the leaders of the opposition parties and movements, whose members are involved in the "elections", said bchd.info.

Vital Rymasheusky reminds Aliaksandar Milinkevich, Vladimir Nyaklyaeu, and Irina Veshtard that on February 2, 2012, their organizations: the movement "For Freedom", civil campaign "Tell the Truth", and the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada), together with the BPF Party signed a declaration "On the public debate on objectives and forms of participation of the Belarusian opposition in the "Elections-2012", in which, inter alia, they declared their intention to withdraw all candidacies  in case if the problem of political prisoners is not solved.

"We certainly believe that the Democratic candidates cannot be on the ballot at the same time, when political prisoners still remain in the country. We urge the Belarusian authorities to release them as soon as possible. We will encourage all members of the democratic community of Belarus to withdraw their candidacies after using all the features of the campaign a week before the start of early voting, if to that time all the fifteen political prisoners aren’t released, or new political prisoners have appeared in the country," - is stated in the Declaration.

Vital Rymasheusky reminds that political prisoners are still in prison; their situation is only getting worse. Prison term of Dmitry Dashkevich was extended for nearly a year. The same punishment threatened to other political prisoners.

Despite this, at the moment only BPF expressed his opinion about the possible implementation of the signed declaration.

There is just over a week until the day of the "elections"; before voting - three days.

"It's not too late to fulfill commitments of the declaration and publicly address to the citizens of the country.

For the sake of the unity of democratic opposition, about which so much has been said in recent months, today we need a little bit – we need you and your organizations to fulfill your commitments and publicly voiced promises", - says Rymashevsky.