The Central Election Commission has received documents from five contenders for the post of President.

The Central Election Commission of Belarus has received documents from five presidential hopefuls, BELTA reports.

Documents for registration were submitted by Tatsiana Karatkevich, Siarhei Haidukevich, and Mikalai Ulakhovich. Today, documents were presented for the incumbent head of state, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Viktor Tereshchenko also submitted documents, but he failed to collect the required 100,000 valid signatures.

It became known that four potential candidates had effectively reached the registration stage after the results of the signature verification were published. The number of valid signatures in support of Alyaksandr Lukashenka was 1,753,380 (1,761,145 submitted), Mikalai Ulakhovich - 149,819 (159,805 submitted), Siarhei Haidukevich - 139,877 (141,842 submitted), and Tatsiana Karatkevich - 105,278 (107,299 submitted).

As previously reported, Viktor Tereshchenko's initiative groups submitted 130,404 signatures for verification, but only 6,699 were found to be valid. However, as explained by the Chairperson of the Central Election Commission, Lidiya Yarmoshyna, Tereshchenko might have more valid signatures, but the law establishes a special verification procedure: there is a certain percentage threshold of invalid signatures, after exceeding which all signatures collected in a given region are not counted. In Tereshchenko's case, many of the signatures are fictitious or made by non-existent persons. "This indicates that in a number of regions, members of the initiative group did not collect signatures but forged them, and some signature sheets with such signatures were submitted to the election commissions," commented the head of the CEC.

The next important stage of the election campaign will be the registration of candidates for the highest state post. The CEC plans to hold it on September 10, so that a full period of pre-election campaigning and propaganda can begin on September 11. In addition to publishing their programmes in print media, candidates for head of state will be able to speak for free on the "Belarus 1" TV channel from September 14 to 25 (from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM). Furthermore, time is allocated for candidates on the radio - on weekdays from September 21 to October 2 (from 6:10 AM to 7:10 AM).

The televised debates will take place on October 3, and the order of their conduct will be determined by the Belteleradiocompany.

Belarus News (BELTA)