Human Rights Activists: Serious Breaches of Election Procedure

"Elections" do not comply with international standards and Belarus legislation.

Public campaign "Human Rights Activists for Free Elections" presented assessment of the electoral process for compliance with the Belarusian legislation and international standards on free and democratic elections, Radio Svaboda reports.

The press conference started at 10:00. Aleh Hulak, Chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Valiantsin Stefanovich, Deputy Chairman of Viasna Human Right Center, took part.

"The election process suffered severe violations of international standards and not fully corresponded to the Belarusian legislation," Aleh Hulak stated.

Results on the election supervision are published on the web-site of the HRC Viasna:

- 36.05% of all voters went to the early voting, what is the largest number, if compare to the previous elections in 2001, 2006, 2010. Early voting, in fact, became an ordinary thing that did not comply with the Electoral Code;

- During observation of the early voting, members of campaign "Human Rights Activists for Free Elections" noticed numerous facts of forced citizens' participation in early voting. It repeated negative practice of the previous election campaigns;

- There were cases of overstated turnout at some PSCs. Generalized difference in the number of voters who took part in early voting, according to observers and the PSC, amounted to 6.2% of 144 PSC under observation, with the difference exceeding 50% at some PSCs.

- Observation results at the early voting show that 48.55% campaign observers noted discordance between numbers of early voters presented by the PSCs and observers;

- Uladzimir Vialichkin, observer of campaign "Human Rights Activists for Free Elections", as well as some observers of company "Right to Choose 2015" were unreasonably deprived of accreditation at the station;

- Early voting problem is one of the system ones that allows for administrative resource use and other manipulations. In this regard, recommendations of the OSCE/ODIHR in so far as it refers to amendments to procedure of early voting are relevant.