Civil campaign “European Belarus” doesn’t run in elections

Some websites have reported that “the “European Belarus” movement announced the decision to run in the elections.” We asked Andrei Sannikov, one of the leaders of the civil campaign “European Belarus”, to comment on the reports.

– The objective of the civil campaign European Belarus is promotion of European values in our country and gathering signatures of Belarusian citizens for joining the European Union. Members of the civil campaign take independent decisions whether they run for the elections or not. Most of the active participants of the “European Belarus” civil campaign stand for boycotting of the coming “elections”, because the present regime in the country doesn’t create any conditions for more or less transparent and fair electoral processes, – Sannikov noted.

– Members of the “European Belarus” view boycott of the elections on this stage in broader sense – boycott to dictatorship and boycott to the regime. It is evident today that preserving of the current political system in Belarus will lead to extremely dangerous consequences for independence of our state, so running for the elections would mean support the regime and created by it falsification system. One should be careful about the promises of the regime to European and international institutions, first of all, because the authorities haven’t made a single step to improve the conditions of holding the elections, while there remains high danger of legitimation of the regime if democratic opposition will participate in the elections. Party leaders, as it follows from their statements, understand the situation and will use the election campaign to change the current election system. In my view, leaders of opposition parties won’t take part in electoral farce if there are no their representatives in electoral commissions, if the authorities choose who from the united list of opposition will be registered and who won’t. In the end we must by combined efforts return the right to choose to the Belarusian people and make the regime change considerably its policy, – one of the leaders of the “European Belarus” civil campaign believes.