Halina Syamdzyanava: “CEC must retire”

Halina Syamdzyanava, representative of the Belarusian Popular Front in the Central Election Commission with an advisory vote told journalist about work of the commission during the “elections”.

According to Halina Syamdzyanava, most members of the Central Election Commission kept a low profile at sessions. However, there were some exceptions, pbnf.org writes.

“The most active members are Kisyalyova, Lazavik and Yarmoshyna her self. The others just voted obediently,” Halina Syamdzyanava tells.

“It was found out suddenly that the so called regional supervisors have most of the power, but nature of appearing of a supervisory institution can’t be explained. The election laws say nothing about this. All falsifications at the “elections” were made by these supervisors,” Halina Syamdzyanava says.

Four representatives of democratic parties in the CEC tried to clear up why there are only 5 representatives of democratic parties among 260 members of election commissions in Minsk.

“Lidziya Yarmoshyna answered to this that those who could conduct the elections in best way had been included into the commissions, “ the BPF activists tells.

Halina Syamdzyanava gave a number of examples of violations she and her colleagues recorded during the work in the CEC. They are:

1. Permission to vote with any document, though it is allowed to sign for a candidate only with a passport.

2. Refusal to seal bottoms of boxes.

3. Refusal for candidates to record new speech, and not to repeat an old one during the so called re-run of a 5-minute speech.

4. Seminars and trainings were organised only for heads and secretaries of commissions of different levels.

5. Refusal to consider complaints of democratic candidates.

6. A secret meeting of the CEC and President ahead of the early voting.

“CEC should have retired after such “elections” in a normal country,” Halina Syamdzyanava said.

“Due to our participating in the “elections” we have evidence of gross violation of electoral laws on different levels and stages of the elections. In my view, we must say to the whole world that the parliament is illegitimate,” she added.