Alyaksandr Milinkevich, leader of the Movement for Freedom, has filed an appeal against the denial of registration as a parliamentary candidate with the Supreme Court.
In August, a district election commission said that that the former presidential candidate should not be granted registration because too many of his ballot-access signatures were invalid. The central election commission upheld the decision.
In his appeal, Mr. Milinkevich, who sought to run for the House of Representatives in Uruchskaya Electoral District No. 109 in Minsk, argues that he had enough valid ballot-access signatures for registration as a candidate. The signatures declared by the election authorities “invalid” were signatures that had already been crossed off by his nomination group and should not have been taken into account and examined at all, according to the appeal.
Electoral regulations do not say how signatures should be removed from sheets by nomination groups, Mr. Milinkevich says.
Mr. Milinkevich says that he gathered 2,500 ballot-access signatures, while parliamentary hopefuls are required to collect just 1000 valid signatures to be granted access to the ballot.
