Lazavik didn’t like the report of OSCE ODHIR

Secretary of the CEC criticized the report of the Assessment Mission of OSCE ODIHR in Belarus.

The mission visited Belarus on July 16-18, reminds BelTA. During this time, the experts conducted a series of meetings with representatives of governmental bodies, political parties, and public organizations. "From 15 registered political parties in Belarus the OSCE ODIHR mission chose only four - mostly of opposition views. As a result, the basis of the report consists of information of the representatives of civil society, who tend to imagine Belarusian reality in a rather negative way", - said Mikalai Lazavik.

He declared the intention of the CEC to work constructively with international observers. "Errors of the assessment mission of the OSCE – are not malicious intrigues. This is a result of the fact that the experts had too much trust to information from unreliable sources. Plus, a short time the mission spent in Belarus ", - stressed he.

Mikalai Lazavik noted that the report of the OSCE mission assessed the political context of preparations for the elections, the legislative framework, and the electoral system. The experts also paid attention to registration process of candidates, the condition media, and encouraged to send a full-scale election observation mission to Belarus - 40 long-term and 270 short term observers.

Mikalai Lazavik said that one cannot agree with all findings of the OSCE assessment mission. "Certain statements in this report are clearly not true", - said the secretary of the CEC.

"For example, about the fact that citizens are not much interested in the elections and there is no public trust to the electoral process. But, according to the results of sociological researches, conducted by the information and analytical center at the Presidential Administration, about 83% of adult Belarusians are going to participate in the elections, while 84% tend to trust the results of the elections", - said Mikalai Lazavik.

The Secretary of the Central Election Commission told that the report states that such civil organizations like "Belaya Rus", the Federation of Worker Unions of Belarus, and the BRYU have the right to nominate and promote candidates.

"There is even said that the mission have information that "Belaya Rus" intends to nominate candidates in almost all electoral districts. But according to the Belarusian legislation, associations are not eligible to nominate candidates. Only political parties are eligible", - explained Mikalai Lazavik.

The secretary of the Central Election Commission does not agree with the conclusions of the mission that district election commissions have been formed in a closed mode. "This is absolutely untrue. Relevant meetings of regional executive councils, presidiums of the councils of deputies, and Minsk City Executive Committee were open. Subjects who offered their nominations for the committees were invited to these meetings.. At some meetings, even presented observers, although that is not provided by law", - said the CEC secretary.

Mikalai Lazovik emphasized that the mission of the OSCE ODIHR noted as positively the fact that candidates will be able to create individual funds to finance their election campaign. At the same time, the experts concluded in advance that the maximum size of the fund of 1000 base rates is extremely low (currently the base rate is 100,000 BYR).

"It is unclear on what basis they stated that this is not enough. After all, no one has formed this fund, no one has used it. Perhaps, it even won’t be created completely. Although it is possible that 1000 base rates will be not enough. But it will be possible to say for sure after the procedure will be tested in practice", - said the secretary of the CEC.

He recalled that at the last parliamentary elections in 2008 50 base rates were allocated to each candidate to pay for production of printed materials. There could not be any other funds. Now each candidate can form a fund up to 1000 base rates, which is 20 times greater than it was before.

"Today, some opponents of the authorities claim that their goal is not to make the elections free and democratic, but to find as many drawbacks as possible. As one can see, the objectives of the organizers of the elections and those who provided information for the OSCE experts are different. Therefore, even purely positive facts were presented as negative", - concluded Mikalai Lazavik.