26 September 2004
United Civic Party may lose many of its parliamentary candidates
Minsk, 25 September. The opposition United Civic Party (UCP) may have many of its already registered parliamentary candidates barred from running in the forthcoming parliamentary elections if information that the Ministry of Justice has illegitimated the party's nomination convention comes true.
At its 8th convention held on August 29, the UCP put forward 58 nominees. One of them was former TV presenter Zinaida Bondarenko, who was to be fielded in Smorgon, Grodno region.
The district commission denied her registration as a candidate for allegedly misstating her 2003 income - the difference between what she had stated and what the local tax authorities said was 20 rubels - and because the justice department of the Grodno regional government notified the commission of the illegitimacy of the UCP convention. The justice ministry reportedly confirmed this by a fax message.
However, this news was a complete surprise to the central election commission, which considered Ms. Bondarenko's complaint about the ballot-access denial on September 25. Even Valery Mitskevich, deputy minister of justice who is a member of the commission, said that he had not heard of such a decision. "I do not consider this piece of paper [fax message] a document," he told BelaPAN.
The central commission ultimately decided to postpone decision-making on Ms. Bondarenko's complaint until September 29 and find out within the next few days whether or not the justice ministry had illegitimated the UCP convention.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Plisko, the UCP's representative to the commission, expressed the opinion that the notification that the ministry had sent to the Smorgon district election commission only concerned the nomination of Ms. Bondarenko.
He also told BelaPAN that if the party's nomination convention were declared illegitimate, the UCP would lose many of its candidates. However, he added, the party's key candidates, including Chairman Anatoly Lebedko, would remain in the race, as they also had been nominated through the collection of voter signatures.
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