Courageous observer disclose swindle: turnout faked (Video)

An observer representing the United Civil party, Svyatlana Vyarhejchyk, has documented swindle by district election commissions at Minsk polling stations 484 and 485 of Staravilenski district, where Anatol Lyabedzka was running. According to the observer’s calculations, the voting turnout has been overstated almost twofold!

Mrs Vyarhejchyk monitored the “elections” at the polling station 484 in Minsk (she was officially registered there), and at the polling station #485, as voting took place in the same room. The woman started her work on September 23, and in fact didn’t leave the polling station while its doors were open, until September 29, Nasha Niva writes.

Those who had monitored elections know the system: a person comes to vote, takes a ballot and puts it into the ballot box, and the observer puts a tick in his notebook. On September 23 Mrs Vyarhejchyk had 12 ticks in her notebook, 21 on the next day, 28 persons came on September 25, 35 on September 26, and 40 persons on Saturday, September 27.

“As far as I heard, the same figures were whispered to the chairman of the commission by its members,” the observer says. “I am giving honest, concrete figures, as I was sitting there all the time, in the presence of the police, and everybody could see me. Monitoring was as a work for me. I might have missed just one or two persons. But there wasn’t inrush, and it was easy to count people. Mostly people over 60 came. Over these 5 days only 10 young men have come to these two polling stations”.

On the election day the observer didn’t notice high voter turnout. “Thus, if we sun up the numbers of those who took part in the early vote, at home and on the election day, according to my calculations, there are 658 of them,” Mrs. Vyarhejchyk concludes.

It is worth mentioning that the chairman of the commission, Uladizmir Tsarou, flatly denied information about the number of registered voters at the polling station, and how many ballots had been received: “Call the Central Elections Commission”. “It is the first time in ten years I wasn’t provided such information,” the observer resents. “To my mind, it is not secret”.

Vote count has started. “Mr Tsarou made us sit far away. He ordered us like a commanding officer. Do not speak! Do not stand up! Do not move!”, the woman says. “The election commission encircled the table from the two sides. I was sure that there are only 136 ballots there; I could be mistaken by two persons maximum. But when they overturned the ballot box of early voting, I simply wanted to go away. It was literally piled with ballots. There were piles of ballots! It looked as if there were even more of them then in the ballot box intended for the Election Day proper. Papers should have reproduced themselves, have spawned… It was incredible! It was a shock for me. They saw me sitting and observing all the time… I found courage to stand up and not to leave, though I was ashamed to see people lying so brazenly”. The figures announced by the commission were impressive: 1,163 persons had voted according to the official report. “It is almost twice as much as in reality!” Mrs Vyarhejchyk expresses indignation.

A similar situation was observed at the polling station #485. The official figures are: out of 1,928 voters registered at the polling station, 1010 took part in the vote. “And according to our calculations, there were only 560 persons including those who had taken part in the early vote at home,” Mrs Vyarhejchyk says.

“You know that we, observers, are nothing for chairmen of the commissions. Something should be changed apparently. I have never been humiliated like that before,” she says sadly and signs.

Results of observing of Svyatlana Vyarhejchyk show that the Belarusians boycotted the “election”. Even taking into consideration early voting, voter turnout didn’t exceed 40 per cent, and was 25 per cent on the main election day.