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Central election commission issues warning to Nyaklyayew’s group

 

The central election commission on October 14 issued an official warning to the nomination group of presidential hopeful Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, BelaPAN said.

The commission said that it had received many complaints about violations by the group of electoral regulations, including premature electioneering, the printing of campaign materials abroad and the collection of ballot-access signatures by people who were not members of the group and by people under 18 years of age.

Mr. Nyaklyayew’s campaign chief, Andrey Dzmitryew, insisted that the presidential hopeful had not assigned under-18-year-olds and other unauthorized people to collect signatures for him.

He said that the group was aware of the distribution of campaign flyers for Mr. Nyaklyayew but had nothing to do with them. The group did not order the flyers and did not distribute them, he stressed.

“It has long been known that the group acts in violation of regulations and Nyaklyayew is aware of this,” said Mikalay Lazavik, secretary of the central election commission. “Your group certainly asks for trouble. The group is interesting, but the law is the law.”

Lidziya Yarmoshyna, head of the central election commission, told reporters following the commission’s meeting that one warning would be enough for denying Mr. Nyaklyayew registration as a candidate if violations persisted.

“Registration denial is a very harsh measure. We are not considering such a move at the moment,” Ms. Yarmoshyna said, expressing hope that Mr. Nyaklyayew’s nomination group would right itself.

Ms. Yarmoshyna said that the central election commission had not tried to find out who had ordered a printing house in Russia to print the flyers. “The main thing is that these campaign materials were distributed by the nomination group of Nyaklyayew and this was the main ground for our decision to issue the warning,” she said.