Presidential election 2015 in Belarus

The documents to be registered as presidential candidates have been submitted by Tatiana Korotkevich, Sergei Gaidukevich, Nikolai Ulakhovich and incumbent President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. The documents were also submitted by Viktor Tereshchenko, who failed to collect the necessary 100,000 valid signatures.

A week ago the Central Election Commission of Belarus released preliminary information about the number of authentic voter signatures collected to nominate potential candidates for the Belarus presidency. The number of authentic signatures given to nominate incumbent president Alexander Lukashenko as a presidential candidate made up 1,753,380 (a total of 1,761,145 were submitted). After examination the number of authentic signatures to support the potential candidate Nikolai Ulakhovich stood at 149,819 (159,805). Sergei Gaidukevich has managed to collect 139,877 (141,842), while Tatiana Korotkevich has gathered 105,278 (107,299) voter signatures.

Viktor Tereshchenko’s initiative group submitted an estimated 130,404 signatures. However, only 6,699 of them were taken as authentic.

The next step of the ongoing election campaign is the registration of presidential candidates. The CEC intends to register candidates for the Belarus presidency on 10 September to allow full-fledged pre-election campaigning as from 11 September. Apart from the publication of their programs in the national printed media outlets, the presidential candidates will be able to make TV and radio speeches from 14 September through 2 October.

TV debates of the candidates for the post of the President of Belarus will take place on 3 October. The order of holding the debates and their hosts will be determined by the Belarusian TV and Radio Company.