On the 17^th of May activists of “Our House” addressed the elected deputies of the House of Representatives of Belarus concerning the upcoming parliamentarian election. The subject of the appeal was access to the full and reliable information regarding the candidates’ participation in the elections.

A week later first responses from the Chamber started to arrive. The very first to respond was Mr. Alexandr Stetsko (constituency # 6).  A double response was received – electronically and in the hard copy; content wise, however, it was rather thin. In a couple of lines Mr. Stetsko informed that he had no intentions to run for the position “due to the state of health”.

Ms. Alla Naumchik (consistency # 37) clarified that it was “way too early to plan anything”.  Unfortunately she felt that the question was not worth answering to on the official note-paper. This thought seemed to be shared by Mr. Petr Shostak (consistency #38).

Two deputies, Mr. Vasily Papko (consistency #24) and Mr. Oleg Levshunov (consistency 33), expressed their opinion regarding the question from the members of public in the manner that it is their own business and there is nothing that obliges the elected deputies to reveal this information.

Ms. Ludmila Dobrynina (consistency #26) ensured us that should she decide to run for the office her campaign will be built on the rule of law secured in the Constitution and other laws.

Not all the deputies bothered themselves with responding to the address. Out of ninety seven lucky owners of the electronic addresses among the MPs only eight answered, only five of them also sent the response by post.

On the other hand, ‘election is coming’ and perhaps we are yet to see some more responses.