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Aleh Vouchak: “Elections” Were Illegal By Default Due To Lukashenka’s Participation

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Aleh Vouchak: “Elections” Were Illegal By Default Due To Lukashenka’s Participation
ALEH VOUCHAK
PHOTO: CHARTER97.ORG

After the “referendum” of 2004 mister dictator does not have a right to stand as a candidate.

Such an opinion has been expressed by the head of The Legal Assistance to Population human rights centre, Aleh Vouchak, commenting on the results of the “elections - 2015” in Belarus:

- I support the official report of the OSCE, according to which this “campaign” fell short of the international requirements and standards.

Proceeding to concrete violations, democratic candidates were excluded from participation on the first stage, and representatives of the civil society were not allowed to become members of election commissions.

Secondly, when “candidates” were registered, under the law Aliaksandr Lukashenka was to go on vacation – at least, to go on TV screen less, for equal conditions to be created.

The most serious questions were raised by the early voting. It must disappear completely, as rigging is mostly taking place during the early voting. And the practice has shown this time that ballot stuffing was taking place exactly within these five days.

It strikes that a great number of independent observers were expelled from polling stations. Those who were left, could not follow vote “counting”, as they were kept at a great distance from tables of commissions.

Like in previous years, no one was counting votes in early voting separately – everything was counted together, observers had no opportunity to see whose votes there were, as ballot papers were not put in stacks.

By no means all commissions gave an account every day about the number of those who had taken vote. That is why it was difficult to check turnout, and the figures recorded by observers differ greatly from the figures finally announced by commissions.

There was no transparency, the “election” results are put into question not only by observers from Belarus, but also by international experts who were present there.

In general, my opinion as a human rights watchdog is: Aliaksandr Lukashenka had no right to run for presidency in this “elections”, as the referendum in 2004 was held with violations of the Constitution and international treaties. And the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe issued a decision that the referendum was illegitimate, and since that time Lukashenka has no right to stand as a “candidate”.

Right from the start I said that these “elections” would not be recognized, and exactly with the same wording: for participation of the “candidate”, who does not have a right to participate since 2004.

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