Four and Lukashenko: candidates for presidency of Belarus who were allowed to run for election

On July 14, the Central Election Commission of Belarus registered candidates for the presidency of the country. The main opponents of the current president, Alexander Lukashenko, who collected the most signatures in their support, banker Viktor Babariko and former director of the Minsk High-Tech Park Valery Tsepkalo were not allowed to participate in the elections. Babariko is in jail, he was arrested in the case of tax evasion. In relation to Tsepkalo, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is also conducting an audit - on a statement of bribery, and for registration as a candidate, according to the Central Election Commission, he did not have enough signatures. Writes about this "Present Tense".

Photo: Shutterstock

Who did the CEC allow before the presidential race and who will compete with the current president?

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, wife of an arrested blogger

Svetlana is 38 years old, she is a translator and teacher of foreign languages ​​by education. Now she is a housewife with two children.

Svetlana decided to run for president when the Central Election Commission did not register the initiative group of her husband, video blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, owner of the “Country for Life” channel. Sergei has been under arrest since May 29: he was detained as a result of provocation during a picket in support of his wife. He is accused of gross violation of public order, as well as interference in the work of election commissions. Since June 13, Tikhanovsky has been in a punishment cell.

In a few interviews, Svetlana said that she and Sergei have an ordinary family and she would like to “be free from elections”: “I want to live my quiet life. But without Sergei it won’t be the same life. On the other hand, I think that registering is much safer for me. It’s just much more difficult to attract a presidential candidate for something.”

While collecting the signatures required for registration, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya reported that she received threats in connection with the campaign: from an unfamiliar number they said that she could be imprisoned and their children could be taken away. “I have a choice: children or further struggle. I think my choice will be obvious,” Tikhanovskaya said then. – I ask you to treat any of my decisions with understanding. I want to say that if Sergei was free, he would say not to give up.”

But later she announced that she would continue to participate in the election campaign, despite the threats, because only in this way could she help her husband.

At pickets to collect signatures for alternative presidential candidates in different cities of Belarus, there were huge queues to see Tikhanovskaya. As a result, many coordinators and members of her initiative group were detained. Lukashenko called the participants in the pickets in support of Svetlana and Sergei Tikhanovsky “Maidanuts” and accused the signature collectors of a “carousel.”

After the Central Election Commission meeting on July 14, at which Svetlana was registered as a presidential candidate, she stated that she did it for the sake of her husband and “those who believed him.” “Seryozha, I love you very much. I do this for you and those who believed in you. I believe that my husband will not break.” Tikhanovskaya also said that she would think about the advisability of uniting with other candidates.

Anna Kanopatskaya, “the daughter of a legal millionaire”

Kanopatsky 43 years. She is a lawyer by education.

She worked as a director of a private law firm. Since 1995, she was a member of the United Civil Party, from which she left in 2019.

On the subject: From rock musician to life coach: how Belarus achieved heights in the USA and why he returned to his homeland

In 2016, Anna became a member of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus. She resigned as deputy in 2019, and was not re-elected for a second term.

As a deputy, Kanopatskaya developed a bill that preserves the integrity of the president, whose powers expired, and also gave such a politician substantial material guarantees and benefits for himself and his family.

Anna’s father, Anatoly Ivanovich Trukhanovich, is called a “legal Belarusian millionaire” by the Belarusian media. It is known that Trukhanovich refused his state pension because it was “too small.” He himself stated that he “attracted a million dollars worth of investments into the country.” He once participated in the financing of the United Civil Party, but has not done this for a long time, as he “became a beggar.”

Commenting on the nomination of his daughter as a presidential candidate, Trukhanovich noted that he does not believe in the success of this matter, but supports her. “I, of course, bless Anna, although I understand how many of our people have served time and disappeared. But good luck, let him try,” he noted.

Anna Kanopatskaya actively leads Facebook, where she publishes mainly her photos. Including - with the new Range Rover car and even in the bathhouse. In one of the posts, Kanopatskaya wrote that she was choosing a dress for the inauguration.

Experts believe that Kanopatskaya is a “spoiler” of the current President Lukashenko, and her tactic is to “scold not so much the current government as all the other contenders.”

She allowed herself some rather incorrect statements regarding other potential candidates. Speaking about Viktor Babariko, Kanopatskaya said: “The manager of Gazprom cannot be the president of our country. This is equivalent to saying that a pedophile cannot be a kindergarten teacher.”

She herself claimed that she was not going to play along with the current president, and those who consider her a “spoiler” are mistaken.

It is interesting that after checking at the Central Election Commission, Anna Kanopatskaya had more signatures required to register a presidential candidate than she stated when submitting: 110 thousand submitted versus 146 valid and registered by the Central Election Commission. The head of the Central Election Commission, Ermoshina, commenting on this, referred to the activity of her initiative group: “When everything is at the amateur level, when there are a thousand people in the group and they work for free, then, naturally, there can always be problems with the transfer of information and reporting.”

Kanopatskaya herself, answering questions from journalists, could not remember the exact number of signatures she submitted to the CEC. But, speaking at a meeting in Grodno, where she came on July 13 to support the coordinator of her initiative group, who was tried for participation in the recent “Chain of Solidarity” action, Kanopatskaya said that only two serious politicians are participating in the current presidential campaign - she and the current President Alexander Lukashenko.

Sergey Cherechen and “extra” signatures

Sergei Cherechen is 35 years old. When running for president, he said he wanted to “gain experience.”

He has a technical and economic education (Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio Electronics, Atlant-M Institute of Business Technologies). According to data on his personal website, since 2008 Cherechen has worked as a crisis management consultant, developed and implemented development strategies, conducted assessments and audits of the state of enterprises. For the last two years, he has been managing S58 Technologies LLC, which is involved in investment and consulting areas.

Cherechen began to be actively involved in social activities in 2016, when he ran for the House of Representatives from the Communist Party (a year later he left it of his own free will). Now he is the chairman of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada).

In one of his interviews, Cherechen said that his goal is “to build a country of opportunity in Belarus. A country whose citizens will be kindly envied by schoolchildren and students, workers and businessmen, young families and pensioners of other countries.”

In Cherechen’s election program, posted on his website, he proposes to abolish the “tax on parasitism,” the transport tax and the mandatory distribution of university graduates, which is still in effect in Belarus. Among other things, he advocates introducing a moratorium on the death penalty and jury trials in Belarus, as well as “repairing the state apparatus,” developing national values ​​and self-identity, returning the historical flag and coat of arms, friendship with neighbors and declaring neutrality.

Cherechen does not hide his sympathy for Ukrainian President Zelensky. In her campaign she uses the slogan “Time for Che” Time for change!” He also announced that he is ready to withdraw from the elections if this brings a certain result.

With signatures of voters that a potential presidential candidate had to submit to the CEC in order to register as a candidate, Chechen had the same incident as Kanopatskaya. For his nomination, the politician collected 106 thousand signatures. However, announcing the results of the audit, the CEC said that its initiative group allegedly passed significantly more - 149 signatures. After verification, 750 signatures were registered with the Central Election Commission.

The head of the CEC Lidia Yermoshina, when asked by the BelaPAN news agency, where Cherechen got almost 50 extra signatures, answered:

“This is yet another proof that some of our applicants do not control the activities of their initiative groups at all.” “To attribute something to the leader of, let’s say, an opposition party is such complete absurdity, there’s even nothing to comment on here. We only have what is presented to us from below, and the grassroots commissions have what they collected from the coordinators,” she explained.

The potential presidential candidate himself explained that these could have been signatures that did not pass verification: “We collected statistics for 106, subtracted it, submitted this information, everything else was in a rush, and it was absolutely not important to us how much was submitted in excess ", he noted.

Andrey Dmitriev and the calmest campaign

Dmitriev is 41 years old. He is a bachelor of political sciences, graduated from the European Humanities University in Vilnius.

In the presidential elections of 2010 and 2015, he was the head of the headquarters of Vladimir Neklyaev and Tatyana Korotkevich, and now he is the leader of the civil campaign “Tell the Truth.”

Dmitriev said that he was ready to support other candidates, except Kanopatskaya and Lukashenko.

Submitting documents to the Central Electoral Commission, Dmitriev told reporters that he was doing this “with a very heavy heart,” since what is happening now in Belarus is “absolute chaos.”

When asked why he continued the presidential campaign anyway, Dmitriev answered that it was necessary to use it to tell everyone about this lawlessness and to seek the release of Babariko, Tikhanovsky, Losik and other political prisoners.

Andrei Dmitriev's campaign did not stand out with any high-profile events or statements. Many considered him a spoiler for Lukashenko. Dmitriev responded that, in his opinion, this opinion arose because “the authorities are actually playing with people, destroying those who were at the forefront of the attack, and it seems that those who are not so popular are spoilers.”

On the subject: 'Opportunity to leave the comfort zone': Belarusian spoke about work at Uber and life in New York

Speaking at the Central Election Commission during his registration as a presidential candidate, Dmitriev said that Belarus had lost five years since the last election, when Lukashenko again remained in office.

“Instead of development and reforms, we got stagnation with eternal window dressing, enemies among our citizens, rudeness and irresponsible policies during the coronavirus. That is why these elections are so important to us. They are trying to pull the rug out from under our feet - from all those who want change. They don’t want to notice us or notice our choice. This campaign has become like a confrontation, not an election. To date, more than 700 arrests have been made. The authorities are putting pressure on opponents, members of their teams, bloggers and politicians, some of whom are already in prison. In addition, places for holding actions and rallies are limited. Many look at this and already want to give up and not go to vote - this is what the authorities are trying to achieve from us,” Dmitriev said and called on us not to give up.

Alexander Lukashenko, current president

For Alexander Lukashenko, this election will be the sixth. He came to power in 1994 and changed the Constitution several times to remain in the presidency.

In 1994, when electing the head of state, no one in the country could have imagined that a simple director of a state farm would build a system of power exclusively for himself and, having received the nickname “the last dictator of Europe,” would lead Belarus for at least a quarter of a century.

On July 20, 1994, the first president of Belarus, with his hand on the Constitution, took the first oath to the country in his life. In his speech, he quoted Abraham Lincoln: “Democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and stated that the only dictatorship in Belarus can only be the dictatorship of law.

In 1996, a second referendum was held in Belarus, whose opponents called it a constitutional coup.

One of the questions for which Lukashenko suggested voting was as follows:

“Adopt the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus of 1994 with amendments and additions (new edition of the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus) proposed by the President of the Republic of Belarus A.G. Lukashenko.”

These changes and additions vested the president, as he himself said, with “royal powers.” Now he could independently, without parliamentary approval, appoint ministers. Could dissolve parliament. Presidential decrees and decrees began to have supreme legal force.

In 2015, the situation in neighboring countries improved the image of Lukashenko: Belarus became a platform for peace talks in the Donbas.

“Let you step over these ambitions, sit down and come to an agreement. Okay, come to Minsk at any level, I’m ready to participate in this, I’m ready to bring you tea myself, pencils, pens, etc.,” Lukashenko exhorted the presidents of Russia and Ukraine. People started talking about Belarus all over the world - and finally in a positive way.

Slowly, sanctions began to be lifted from Belarusian enterprises and businessmen close to Lukashenko. At the end of March 2015, in an interview with Bloomberg, Lukashenko ironically remarked: “I am no longer the last dictator of Europe. There are dictators a little worse than me, right? I’m already the lesser evil.”

On October 11, 2015, Alexander Lukashenko became the President of Belarus for the fifth time with 83,49% of the votes. He has said more than once that he “has had enough of this presidency,” but has no plans to leave: “I cannot help but nominate my candidacy for the presidency. And I will do this so that you will not later accuse me of cowardice and say that I ran away in difficult times. I will put forward my candidacy, and you elect anyone, you don’t have to vote for me. It will be okay. But if something collapses later, when you chose Petrov and not Lukashenko, I will be calm. And if you reproach me for something, I’ll tell you: you could have voted for me.”

Read also on ForumDaily:

What part of the salary is spent on products by residents of Russia, the USA and other countries

Reliable and inexpensive: how is it profitable to send a parcel from the USA to your homeland

Recipes for extending power: how presidents changed the Constitution in the countries of the former USSR

Rating of the most powerful passports in the world, the USA is not in first place

How Belarusian helps American mothers during pregnancy and childbirth

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.