“Right” vote count to be secured by executive committees

Human rights activists have obtained an interesting document, approved by the chairman of Salihorsk district executive committee.

“The plan of organizational and ideological support of the election of the President of Belarus on December 19, 2010 at the territory of Salihorsk district” has been signed by the head of the organizational and staff management department V. Kokhan and a deputy head of the ideological work department T. Subotsina.

This Plan would probably attract no particular interest from observers if it didn’t have an obvious bias for ideological support of the election campaign. The particularly interesting provisions of the document are commented by one of the leaders of the campaign “Human Rights Activists for Free Election” Valyantsin Stefanovich.

The Plan includes provisions which vividly show that the electoral process in the country is greatly controlled by the executive vertical of power.

Thus, the list of organizational arrangements includes “Holding a meeting with chairmen and secretaries of precinct election commissions.” As the executors of this task the district election committee and the district election commission are named.

Holding meetings on the issues of ideological support for preparation and carrying out the election have been imposed on the ideology department of the district election committee.

“That means that in fact executive committees, administrations of enterprises and agencies are engaged in organizing the election, which I find unacceptable,” Stefanovich underlined.

In the period of the election campaign by joint efforts of the ideology work department, the youth work department of the district executive committee and the Belarusian Republican Youth Union district committee In Salihorsk district it is planned to hold a series of “Educational events with young people who are taking part in the election for the first time”.

In this connection the human rights activists note the generally known fact that the BRYU is responsible for the ideological support of the current regime.

“It can become simply one more possibility for campaigning for one of the candidates’ nomination and his support after registration. It is obvious that agents and initiative groups of other candidates won’t have such a possibility – I mean access to educational institutions, organizations and so on,” the human rights watchdog emphasized.

Special attention of “Human Rights Activists for Free Election” has been attracted the intention of ideologists of Salihorsk district executive committee described in the item called “Organizing the work of observers nominated by labour collectives, political parties and public associations in the election commissions.”

“Naturally pro-regime structures are meant. It is not a new tendency, when authorities are actively recruiting observers to polling stations in such pro-regime structures. They are doing so among other things with the aim to neutralize information which would be received from independent observers representing oppositional political parties, so that they would be able to legitimate the election results,” Valyantsin Stefanovich said.

According to human rights activists, such documents are adopted by all district executive committees during all electoral campaigns, and especially the presidential ones.