Today is the Day of Solidarity with the victims of Belarusian regime. Right as I jot these lines, a group of Belarusian Diaspora, American politicians and activists of nonprofits has gathered near the Belarusian embassy in Washington, DC, to support democracy and protest against violations of human rights in Belarus.
A Panacea against Fraud or a Crazy Idea?
Not all pop and rock stars have as many sites and fan sites as Zianon Pazniak, a Belarusian exile, a famous dissident, and a scarecrow of Belarusian television, which has turned him into a radical nationalist. Now this webpage has appeared.
Pazniak withdrew from the current presidential race but keeps on fighting for his own alternative to the elections, which, he assumes, would be falsified anyway. What he campaigns for is so called Popular Vote, the essence of which is to come to a polling station, throw some paper sheet (can be with the name of a candidate you want to vote for) into a voting box, and a real ballot should be taken with you to some people’s popular commission, which would fairly count the votes.
Neither Milinkevich nor Kazulin endorsed the proposal. On the contrary, both articulately stated that they were against it.
However, at this point another reinterpretation of the idea of Popular Vote is circulating. The bottomline is that those who would be forced to vote early should throw a blank sheet and carry the ballot out to a popular commission. But on the elections day a voter should return to a polling station with a valid ballot and throw it in. Will the opposition choose this method of staving off the electoral fraud?
