Ales Byalyatski: Belarusian election commissions formed to falsify

• 30.11.2010, 9:17

Observers have little or no access to the vote count procedure.

The very composition of election commissions and the principle of their formation offer opportunities to rig the election results, Ales Byalyatski, one of the heads of Human Rights Activists for Free Election campaign, told in an interview to “Belorusy I Rynok” newspaper.

Human rights activists have negative estimations of the results of such stage of the election campaign as forming precinct and territorial election commissions. Byalyatski, vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, thinks the administrative leverage was used to form the commissions. The commissions were created virtually under control of the local authorities.

According to him, representatives of democratic parties make only .25% of the total number of election commission members. Their rate in precinct election commission is less than 3%.

It is an important fact that commissions were often formed out of representatives of a single labour collective. As a rule, the head of such a labour collective is appointed the chairperson of the election commission, so commission members work under the command of their immediate superior.

“This principle of forming commissions offers many questions, because public officers are controlled by administration. How will they count the votes? Will they be able to express their opinion if they see violations?” Byalyatski worries.

As the human rights activist thinks, this principle of commission formation creates conditions for electoral fraud. Election commissions cannot be formed in such a way.