MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th August, 2020) Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya may have been under pressure when she recorded her recent message for supporters not to go out to protest, one of her allies, Olga Kovalkova, said Tuesday.
Tikhanovskaya left Belarus late on Monday and is currently in Lithuania. In a recorded message, she asked her supporters to be reasonable, comply with law and no longer protest in the street.
"As someone who has spent a lot of time with Svetlana and knows what she used to say, I can say that she believes she won the election ... I don't think she was likely to say this [urge against protests]," Kovalkova told a press conference.
According to Kovalkova, Tikhanovskaya remained out of reach since Monday afternoon.
"Judging by the clothes she is wearing in the video �and it is what she was wearing when we last met before she went to the Central Electoral Commission � the message was made in the commission's building. She used to say that everyone must act according to the law, but she was reading it off a script yesterday. If she decided to leave Belarus without agreeing it with her team, while in the commission's building, the recording may have been made there as well, I suppose," Kovalkova said.
Another ally of Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kolesnikova, said that two prominent security officials entered the commission's building while Tikhanovskaya was there.
Tikhanovskaya may have been pressured via her husband, who is in detention, ex-presidential candidate Valery Tsepkalo told Sputnik
"Svetlana was released. But they have a way to put pressure on her via her husband who is in prison ... She was pressured," Tsepkalo said over the phone.
