October 25, Pozirk. Aleh Hajdukievič, chairman of the pro-government Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has announced his presidential bid one day after the Belarusian ruler said he will run.
The LDP is one of the four political parties that was granted re-registration last year along with the Biełaja Ruś party of Alaksandar Łukašenka’s supporters, the Communist Party of Belarus and the Republican Party of Labor and Justice.
The party has never missed a single election campaign since 1994, Hajdukievič noted. “We have always worked at the elections to strengthen the constitutional order and to make sure the election goes smoothly without interference from the outside, to make it a feast for the people,” he said.
“The enemies, these Western centers, hate our president because he has preserved the country and strengthened its sovereignty. I want them to be sickened by every presidential candidate participating in the election,” he added, noting that his campaign will serve to display competition.
Only patriots should participate in the election, so that the “enemies would look at the presidential candidates and realize: there is nothing to be done in this country,” Hajdukievič stressed.
Four years ago, Hajdukievič withdrew from the race, handing over his 30,000 ballot-access signatures to Łukašenka and urging voters to cast their ballots for the incumbent.
His father, Siarhiej Hajdukievič, pulled out of the 2010 race, describing it as “a spectacle whose results have been known to everybody for a long time.”
Belarus will hold its seventh presidential election from January 21 to 26, with just three months allocated for the whole election cycle.
The country has not held a single free and fair election since 1996, by standards of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
