No fair votes counting: only appointed members stay in election commissions

The Central Election Commission has refused to consider an issue on unlawful forming of most polling stations election commissions.

CEC members said “it was physically impossible” to check candidatures of all 69,865 members of polling stations election commissions.

It should be reminded that human rights activists, members of political parties and public organisations were going to seek for new forming of election commissions. There are many grounds for this. But the main thing is that principles of forming commissions didn’t agree with the Election Code. Article 35 of the Election Code says only one person from an organisation or labour collective may be included in an election commission. However, commissions in Belarus were formed on an opposed principle. For example, school head master is a chairperson of a commissions, deputy head master is a deputy chairperson, and teachers are common members of a commission. Thus, full subordination is observed here that is absolutely unlawful.

“The CEC obviously didn’t want to consider this issue. CEC members didn’t want to react to this the terrible situation at polling station election commissions. It means the authorities wan to preserve undemocratic principles of votes counting. The authorities decide themselves who will count votes at the election,” Uladzimir Ramanouski, member of the United Civil Party, CEC member with a consultative vote, told in an interview to the Charter’97 press center.

The number of the democrats at poling station election commissions will be only 0.07 per cent of the total number of commissions members.

The CEC ignored all offers of the United Democratic Forces, but a decision of most of opposition parties to the end remains in force.