The "Tell the Truth!" movement plans to participate in the 2014 local elections and put forward up to 1000 candidates, the movement's deputy chairman, Andrey Dzmitryyew, told reporters Wednesday in Minsk.
"Our task is to 'capture' local soviets and make sure that local authorities stop ignoring people's opinions," he said.
Mr. Dzmitryyew noted that the movement's activists had visited at least 100,000 apartments during the 2012 parliamentary elections. What people want most of all is economic reform to make their families more secure and just treatment from authorities, he said.
Mr. Dzmitryyew played up the "Civil Agreement" campaign in which people are invited to report their local problems to the "Tell the Truth!" movement and sign "civil agreements" that require the movement to take steps to solve them.
The organization is launching a "Civil Agreement on Change" strategy that is aimed at creating a "change agenda" based on the interests of a "new majority," he said.
To implement the strategy, it is necessary to politicize this "new majority," Mr. Dzmitryyew said. "That is why we will participate in the local elections and want to become a platform for all those who want to speak about their problem or idea, defend their interests," he said. We call on all those whose interests need protecting and who have proposals for change in their yard, city, country or workplace to participate in the local elections."
Mr. Dzmitryyew said that 2013 should become a year of local leadership. The "Tell the Truth!" movement is ready to unite local leaders and help them become politicians the authorities cannot ignore, he said. The local elections are the best platform for starting to unite and politicize the new majority, he said.
Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, chairman of the "Tell the Truth!" movement, said that boycotting the local elections did not make any sense to him.
Opposition forces' campaigning in previous elections was mostly negative, said Mr. Nyaklyayew, who ran in the 2010 presidential race. "However, people are now interested not in Lukashenka—they know who he is anyway—but in what the opposition can propose," he said. "We should offer a positive incentive to the people who support us at the polls, so that they are not afraid of losing what they now have."
