Constitutional party of Estonia: Estonian politicians have no moral right to criticize Byelorussia

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On March 23, leader of Constitutional Party of Estonia (ex-United People's Party of Estonia — UPPE) Andrei Zarenkov commented to a REGNUM correspondent on recent statement of Estonian MPs group “In defense of democratic development of Byelorussia”. He stated that Estonian politicians have no moral right to criticize Byelorussia. “If they look upon Estonian political situation, they will easily discover that evaluation of Byelorussian elections as ‘unfair’ and ‘non-democratic’ is more easily applied to Estonia,” said Zarenkov.

Zarenkov reminded, that in Byelorussia there are no people without the right to vote. He said that OSCE knows, that for the last 15 years, hundreds thousand people in Estonia have had no right to participate in political elections. People are artificially divided into citizens and non-citizens, despite the fact that they were born in the same time, and all live in Estonia. He also said that according to his UPPE experience, opposition never had the same rights, because they do not receive large economical support from the government, as other parliamentary parties did. He also said that he was ready to state several cases, when businessmen and public persons were threatened of “future problems” with the government, when they wanted to aid UPPE. Also, the opposition has no equal access to state mass media to inform the electorate about their position.

Zarenkov thinks that in Estonia, politicians learned how to oppress democratic opposition without repression, so the oppression is covered.

On March 22, Estonian MPs group “In defense of democratic development of Byelorussia” stated, that recent political elections in Byelorussia were “unfair” and “non-democratic”. Such elections do not correspond with standards, which Byelorussia must observe as OSCE country, said the statement.