As many as 32,000 (3.1 percent) voters in the Brest region cast their ballots on February 25, the first day of the early voting in Belarus' local elections.
The highest turnout was registered in Brest and Baranovichi, as well as in the Baranovichi, Pruzhany, Pinsk and Kamenets districts, the regional election commission told BelaPAN. More than 6,000 voters cast ballots in the regional capital.
The regional election commission registered 527 election monitors, including 43 representatives of non-governmental organization.
A 42-year-old Znamenka, Brest region, man is believed to have burnt himself on Sunday at a bus stop on the Brest-Tomashevka route.
According to the Brest regional emergency relief authority, his charred body was found at the bus stop by firefighters, who put the blaze out within minutes. They had been alerted by locals who saw a burning bus stop shelter.
Some personal belongings were found near the stop together with a suicide note, apparently belonging to the dead man, in which he asked not to blame anyone and apologized to those who were close to him.
A subsequent inquiry established that the man had burned himself and the bus stop, using gasoline. The police are currently looking for motivation behind the presumed suicide.
Twenty out of the 350 individuals held in the pretrial detention center in Brest will have the right to vote in the March 2 local elections, Nikolai
Sukhodolsky, the center's deputy chief, told BelaPAN.
Entitled to vote are only the Belarusians who serve arrest sentences for a minor civil offense, he explained. The jail administration has already submitted the list of voters to the election commission of Precinct No. 17 in whose area the institution is located. On March 2, the 20
prisoners will be visited by members of the local election commission who will bring a ballot box. The room where inmates usually meet with their lawyers will serve as a booth.
The convicts received campaigning leaflets of the two candidates who compete for seats in the Brest City Soviet and of the four running for the Regional Soviet in the electoral district from the election commission members. The candidates, however, have not made use of their right
to meet with the voters in the detention center. The facility currently confines 350 inmates, whereas its capacity limit is 210. Beds are placed in three tiers, while no more than two are allowed by sanitary
requirements. The oldest inmate is 65, the youngest 14.
Leonid Lemeshevsky, chairman of the Brest Regional Soviet and a candidate for the Soviet in the March 2 local elections, has made donations to several educational institutions in the Pinsk district on behalf of the Brest Regional Executive Committee.
In particular, he has presented a new bus to the village schools at Zhidcha and Khoina, which will be used to transport children from neighboring villages. Eight computers have been donated to the school at Molotkovichi. Mr. Lemeshevsky, born in the Pinsk district, was elected to the Regional Soviet from the Pinsk district. Now he will
also be on the ballot there.
He is the only candidate in Pleshchitsy Electoral District No. 52 that includes the above-mentioned villages.
The Brest region has the largest number of religious communities among Belarus' provinces, said the regional government's information department.
There are currently 657 officially registered religious communities representing 19 denominations. Last decade has seen a record amount of new religious entities emerging there and their total number has increased 2.5 times.
The number of religious denominations represented in the area increased from six to 19. The Russian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and Protestantism are keeping the lead.
Some districts clearly show the predominance of a certain religion. For instance, the Pinsk district's believers are dominated by Roman Catholics while the Stolin district has predominately Protestant adherents.
The Orthodox Christian faith, however, dominates most districts. There are only two Muslim communities and as many Uniate (Greek Catholic) communities.
There are also up to 30 operational monasteries, missions, etc.
The first-ever nunnery in the region was opened in Brest at the end of 2002.
Visa and passport officials have so far issued none, as foreign travelers prefer to use border guards' services, Anatoly Gerasimchuk, who heads the Brest regional police department's passport and visa service, told reporters in Brest on Wednesday.
Under an agreement with Russia, Belarusian border control and police departments are to issue migration cards free of charge, collect them when completed, and send them to Russia.
They are not required to count the number of cards issued and they have no right to force travelers to fill in them. There have been several cases of foreign citizens refusing to fill in migration cards, said Mr. Gerasimchuk.
Each card consists of two slips, one of which is to be sent to Russia, and the other, remain with the Belarusian border control authorities.
Russia's official reasoning behind the migration cards is that they will allow authorities to count the number of foreigners who remain in Russia after their visas have expired, in other words, determine the number of illegal migrants.
The issue of migration cards was launched at almost 60 Belarusian border checkpoints and the interior ministry's offices. Russia, for its part, has pledged to monitor third-country nationals traveling to Belarus through Russia.
An agreement on the issuance of Russian migration cards in Belarus was reached during Russian President Vladimir Putin's January 19-20 stay in Minsk.
Three opposition political parties in Brest have threatened to withdraw their candidates from the local election scheduled for March 2 if authorities continue to encroach on "the legal rights of voters and
political parties."
The Belarusian Party of Communists, the Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Narodnaya Hramada" (BSDP), and the Belarusian Popular Front accused local authorities of turning down their candidates to district election commissions in violation of the Electoral Code.
"The persistent atmosphere of arbitrariness, violence and lawlessness during the election campaign might turn the election into a farce and would not help the country out of the long-running crisis," says the statement.
Igor Maslovsky, the BSDP leader in Brest, told BelaPAN that the three parties have notified the central election commission of election campaign irregularities, most of which were not mentioned in their joint statement. He said that each of the three parties could make at least ten complaints about violations of the Electoral Code.
Private fixed-route taxi drivers in Brest have agreed to form a free union for fear that authorities will increase taxes in response to their recent
refusal to pay for using the city's coat of arms on their vehicles.
Late last year Brest authorities sold taxi drivers coat of arms stickers suggesting they place them on their vehicles. Shortly after, the government announced that the drivers must pay 120,000 rubels ($60) each for the use of the symbol. The drivers, however, at a general meeting last week agreed to notify the authorities that they will not
pay the charge and remove the stickers.
Dozens of taxies in the city now have dirty spots on the doors left by the stickers.
An official at the economic department of the Brest City Executive Committee said he did not "comprehend" the drivers' position, noting that the money was intended for road maintenance.
Vasily Dolgolyov, chairman of the Brest Regional Executive Committee, on February 19 reported to Aleksandr Lukashenko on investment projects implemented in the region, the Belarusian leader's press office said.
In particular, Mr. Dolgolyov reportedly informed the head of state about a project of assembling rail cars at a plant in Baranovichi. Mr. Lukashenko ordered that the Belarusian Railroads (national rail operator) should ensure that the plant's capacity is used in full, and that the export of manufactured cars be organized, the press office said. Mr.
Dolgolyov also reported on a Belarusian-Polish project that envisages the assembly of 28-seat buses.
Also under discussion were appointment issues regarding the regional government, the implementation of social programs and measures aimed at meeting the sugar beet and rape production targets in the region.
Border guards in Brest this past weekend detained two Cubans who produced forged Spanish passports, said the State Border Troops Committee's press office.
A subsequent inquiry showed that the Cubans, born 1972 and 1975, had left their country and were travelling to Spain in search of a better life. They said they had bought false passports in Moscow for $3,500 each. One of them boarded a train for Prague, and the other a train for Warsaw. Brest's Leninsky District Court imposed fines on both men,
who may be deported soon.
27 February 2003