Authorities try to assure Belarusians the OSCE recognised “election”

Belarusian television didn’t say a single word that the OSCE/ODIHR election monitoring mission didn’t recognise the “parliamentary election” in Belarus and said they had fell short of OSCE standards. Words of heads of the OSCE mission were extracted from context, Russian Vremya programme on ONT stat-controlled was replaced with ads.

Belarusian state-controlled TV channels gave only first words of Ann-Marie Lizin, head of the PA OSCE observing mission at the yesterday’s press conference in Minsk, who said observers had noted some “positive signals” during the “election campaign”. But the state-run media didn’t say those improvement were minor and the “election” had met OSCE standards and had been recognised unfree and unfair. They also didn’t report that OSCE observers noted “bad or very bad” process of vote counting in 50 per cent of the cases, and 40 per cent of the observers weren’t able to monitor the vote counting in full.

BelTA official information agency created illusion that the “elections” in Belarus were recognised by OSCE observers. Titles speak for themselves: Lidziya Yarmoshyna: OSCE statement on Belarus’ parliamentary elections gives hope; OSCE monitoring mission’s conclusion on elections results in Belarus has a number of positive moments, V. Hihin says; OSCE preliminary conclusion made up in calm, balanced tonality.

Official printed organ of Alyaksandr Lukashenka “Sovetskaya Belorussia” daily issued an article titled Right Direction, which contains the next words on non-recognition the “elections” by the OSCE: “some words should be said about the OSCE mission. Unlike the CIC mission, it includes many people, who are biased against Belarus, it is not necessary evil will, but they exist in this information field.”

The most remarkable fact is that Russian TV channels reporting that OSCE mission hadn’t recognised the “elections” in Belarus were blocked off. So, ONT Belarusian state-controlled channel, working in cooperation with Russian First channel, replaced an item about a press conference of the OSCE mission in Vremya programme with ads.