Barysau: state-owned press keeps silence about democratic candidates or mocks at them
The printed issues of
the mouthpiece of the Barysau District Executive Committee Adzinstva for 1 December 2010 says nothing about oppositional
candidates for president. However, the electronic version of the newspaper
offers to readers mocking reports about the electoral meetings of Yaraslau
Ramanchuk and Andrei Sannikau.
The report about Ramanchuk’s meeting is titled I’ll Build A Bridge And Dig A River, though the candidate haven’t
talked about such things with electors at all. ‘According to Yaraslau
Ramanchuk, the country needs to develop private business and roadside service,
change the priorities in the agriculture, draw investments and wisely use the
natural resources. These ideas aren’t new – that’s the policy the country’s
government has pursued during the last ten years,’ states the author, Andrei
Ivuts. ‘The strengthening of the agricultural complex and construction of
modern farms have been in the focus of attention during the last five years,
and it’s not a merit of the candidate,’ continues the journalist. ‘You should
have looked in the church calendar first than clanging, Mr.’, finishes Ivuts.
His report about the electoral meeting of Andrei Sannikau, titled Belarus Without Europe Or Europe Without Belarus?, conveys similar emotions. Here we draw
some quotations from this odious pasquinade: ‘Hitherto little-known in the
country coordinator of the civil initiative Charter’97,
the leader of the civil campaign European
Belarus (which is in opposition to the present authorities, or at least
positions itself as such), candidate for President Andrei Sannikau appeared in
the hall with a five-minute delay, in the company of the former Chairperson of
the Supreme Soviet of Belarus S.Shushkevich and general V.Fralou, who demonstratively
chewed bubblegum’, or ‘our people is not proud, they listened patiently the
mutual praises of members of Sannikau’s team, applauding from time to time to
some fine words’. Then the journalist enumerates several points of the
electoral program of Mr. Sanikau and ends the article with the statement:
‘Sannikau’s calls to come to the Kastrychnitskaya
Square in Minsk
on 19 December sound even more ‘modest’. The reasons why one needs to come
there are quite simple: the opposition has the tradition of supporting its
candidate, who loses an election. It is easy to predict the future of the
electoral campaign of Andrei Sannikau. And there’s no need for further question
to him…’
Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections
