Anatol Liabedzka, leader of the United Civic Party of Belarus, has suggested political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich for being a single opposition candidate at the 2015 presidential election, Euroradio reports.
Mr Liabedzka is also going to run for presidency but he reserves the right to withdraw from elections.
On Tuesday Belarusian opposition leaders put forward an initiative of holding the Congress of Democratic Forces at which a single opposition will be nominated. The representatives of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party ‘Hramada’, movement ‘For Freedom’, the Belarusian People’s Front, the Belarusian Christian Democracy, movement ‘Tell the Truth!’ signed an appropriate document.
According to the procedure, six participants of the so-called Seven are to give their consent. But the United Civic Party and Belarusian Left Party ‘Just World’ refused to say yes to electing a single candidate at the congress.
Mikalai Statkevich is the last 2010 presidential candidate to be in prison. The sentence given to Mr Statkevich in 2011 was one of the toughest: six years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony. The reason might be explained by the fact that in his election speech Mikalai Statkevich addressed to the current president demanding “to give back all that you have stolen”. The authorities are trying to embitter Statkevich’s life even in prison putting him to a disciplinary cell or making him share a ward with an AIDS sufferer. However, the former presidential candidate keeps mantaining his innocence and refuses to ask president Lukashenka for pardon.
It is not ruled out that the pressure on Mikalai Statkevich will be ramped up after his decision to become a single opposition candidate.
