section_path: Candidates
section_name: Candidates
paragraph_text: Candidates
  
  On 25 February 2024, the day of parliamentary elections, Alexander Lukashenko announced his intention to run for a seventh term in 2025. His candidacy, which was submitted by an initiative group, was accepted by the CEC on 29 October. On the same day, the CEC rejected the candidacies of For Freedom movement leader Yuri Gubarevich, citing "violation of the procedure for submitting documents", and Aliaxandar Drazdou. On 4 November, two more candidates were rejected, Diana Kovaleva and Viktor Kulesh, while three other candidates were allowed to begin collecting signatures to support their candidacies, thereby taking the number of candidates with this status to seven. These include Sergei Syrankov of the Communist Party, Oleg Gaidukevich of the Liberal Democratic Party, and former Interior Ministry spokesperson Olga Chemodanova. On 12 November, Chemodanova and Siarhei Bobrykau dropped their candidacies and endorsed Lukashenko. Following the early December deadline to get 100,000 signatures, the CEC said five candidates were approved to stand: