Businesswoman Natallya Kisel has announced her withdrawal from the election campaign.
On June 15, the Freight Transport Association, which supported Kisel’s nomination for presidency, sent a letter to the media. According to it, the woman had plans to quit the race at the time of submitting the documents to the Central Election Commission.
Natallya Kisel intended to step down in favour of Aleh Haydukevich, Syarhei Shtoda, the head of her initiative group, told tut.by.
“Everyone was aware of about it, Haydukevich knew right from the first day. If he had participated, we would have [withdrawn] in his favour. We were not about to go the whole way, ”Shtoda said.
The initiative group included 147 people. Natallya Kisel did not personally take part in collecting signatures, her team did not stage pre-election pickets in large cities. However, Syarhei Shtoda said earlier that they had managed to collect 108,000 signatures for the businesswoman’s nomination.
As reported earlier, Aleh Haydukevich dropped out in favour of incumbent president Alyaksandr Lukashenka in late May. Aleh Haydukevich, a leader the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus, took over the job of his father. Syarhei Haydukevich, a ‘veteran campaigner’ and Lukashenka’s longstanding sparrer, was running for presidency in 2001, 2006, and 2015.
The Belarusian Central Election Commission (CEC) registered 15 of 55 initiative groups. It means that over a dozen wannabe candidates got the green light for collecting signatures to be nominated for the 2020 presidential run. There are both establishment and moderate opposition politicians among them.
To officially become a presidential candidate, a contender must get 100,000 signatures for his/her nomination. The initiative groups are to be engaged in collecting signatures from May, 21 to June, 19. The names of the candidates will be announced in mid July, and the election will be held on August, 9.
