Minsk: electors confirm authenticity of their signatures for Yury Karetnikau

On 28 August South-western constituency #99 refused to register Yury Karetnikau as candidate to the Chamber of Representatives. The official reason for the refusal was that 16% of the checked signatures were invalid. The politician thinks that this number is groundless. He has already directed an appeal to the Central electoral commission.

‘The following day, on 29 August I was summonsed to the constituency commission and shown the signatures which were found invalid. I agreed that 16 of them about 6%) really contained some inaccuracies. What concerns the remaining 38 signatures, I was told that the graphologic expertise found that the dates in the appropriate column were written by one hand. According to certain calculations, it appeared that the cost of my registration was four signatures. The same day I met with some of the electors whose signatures had been found invalid. All of them confirmed having signed in my support and put the dates in their own hand. I asked them to make written statements about it. I collected eight such statements (more than it was necessary) and attached them to my appeal to the Central electoral commission,’ commented Yury Karetnikau.

The CEC sitting at which the appeals against registration denials are to be considered, is scheduled for 3 September.

Human rights activists for free elections