Baranavichy: Viktar Tsiapin continues struggling for truth

As we have already informed, Viktar Tsiapin, a Baranavichy member of the Belarusian Party of Leftists Fair World, wasn’t registered as a candidate for the city council because he had allegedly wrote the dates opposite the electors’ signatures, whereas it should have been done by them. Tsiapin’s complaint against the non-registration wasn’t granted by the Brest regional election commission.

That’s why the activist lodged a claim with the Baranavichy city court. The trial was appointed on 5 April. However, on Monday Tsiapin’s wife was told by phone that there wouldn’t be any trial. When Viktar Tsiapin came home, he found in his mailbox a court ruling signed by Judge P. Makadai, in which it was stated that the consideration of such complaint was beyond powers of the court.

There’s a rhetorical question: why did the court accept the lawsuit from Viktar Tsiapin, though the letter asked the judge whether it would be correct to lodge it with the city court? Two variants are possible: either the judge doesn’t know the election legislation, according to which such lawsuits are to be passed to the regional courts, or he accepted the documents to play for time so that the activist would miss the legal terms for applying to the Brest regional court.

However, the applicant followed the advice of the Baranavichy human rights defender Siarhei Housha and simultaneously lodged the lawsuit with the Brest regional court.

V.Tsiapin says that the truth is on his side and he will win the trial, the more that recently the regional election commission has registered Dzmitry Auhust and Aleh Malashchanka, two other opposition candidates from Baranavichy, thus confessing that the Baranavichy city election commission had forged documents during verification of their signature sheets.

Tsiapin’s candidacy wasn’t registered during the local council elections in 2007 either, because the Baranavichy city election commission found in his initiative group a person who had allegedly been included in it without his own consent.
 
Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections