During Tuesday’s meeting, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka asked Minsk Mayor Anatol Sivak about the situation in the city.
“I want you and law enforcement agencies to ensure total order in the hero city of Minsk. People’s normal lives should not be impeded,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenka.
According to him, Minsk is a cosy, convenient, and beautiful city where people stand many opportunities to spend time with their children and go in for various sports. However, there are certain people who cannot ‘sit still’, Lukashenka stressed.
The head of state failed to specify what he was coming at, but there is every likelihood that he had in mind the participants in Sunday’s pre-election pickets during which Belarusians signed for his rivals’ nomination for presidency.
As reported earlier, when talking to KGB Chairman Valery Vakulchyk, Alyaksandr Lukashenka warned all the ‘maidan-stricken’ that there will be no maidans in Belarus. He also urged law enforcers to prevent ‘various criminal gangs from wandering around the country with rolled up sleeves’.
This year’s presidential campaign is indicative of the people’s fatigue with the 26-year rule of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. On Sunday, thousands of people throughout the country lined up to put their signatures for any of his rivals. Especially large queues formed after blogger Syarhei Tsikhanouski, a trustee and husband of Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, had been detained in Hrodna on May, 29.
The Belarusian Central Election Commission (CEC) have registered 15 of 55 initiative groups. It means that over a dozen wannabe got the green light for collecting signatures to be nominated for the 2020 presidential run. To officially become a presidential candidate, each of them will have to collect 100,000 signatures until June, 19. The names of the candidates will be announced in mid July, and the election will be held on August, 9.
On May 31, over 30 persons, including members of Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s initiative group and civil activists, were detained or prevented from taking part in pre-election pickets, the human rights centre Viasna reports. Notably, a wannabe presidential candidate does not have to get permission from the authorities for holding such a picket.
