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Anna KanopatskayaBelarusian politician, entrepreneur, lawyer
Date of Birth: 29.10.1976
Country:  Belarus |
Content:
Early Life and Education
Anna Kanopatskaya, a prominent Belarusian politician, was born on October 29, 1976, in Minsk. Her father, Anatoly Trukhanovich, was Belarus' first official dollar millionaire, while her mother was a homemaker. She has a younger sister, Darya, seven years her junior.
Kanopatskaya attended School No. 55 in Minsk before pursuing a law degree at the Belarusian State University. She specialized in "Jurisprudence" and subsequently worked as a director at the legal services company "Greenray."
Political Career
Kanopatskaya entered the political arena as a member of the United Civic Party (UCP) from 1995 to 2019. She served as the UCP's chairman in Minsk from 2013 to 2016 and became a member of the party's Politburo Council in September 2016.
In 2016, Kanopatskaya was elected as a deputy in the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus, representing Minsk's October electoral district. She became a member of the Standing Commission on Economic Policy and the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Presidential Bid
On May 12, 2020, Kanopatskaya announced her candidacy for the presidency of Belarus. She registered an initiative group and claimed to have gathered 100,000 signatures to support her nomination. However, the Central Election Commission later reported that only 146,588 of her signatures were valid.
Kanopatskaya declined to participate in televised debates, stating that she was a "more experienced and accomplished politician" who did not wish to compete with "weaker opponents." She received only 1.68% of the votes in the August 9 elections, totaling approximately 98,000 votes.
Criticism
Analyst Vadim Mozheyko of the Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies suggested that Kanopatskaya's electoral strategy was to criticize not the incumbent President Lukashenko, but the other alternative candidates.
