Yarmoshyna: There's no difference between “elections” for collective farm and “parliament”

The head of the Central Election Commission (CEC) doesn't like aspirants for parliamentary seats.

Lidzia Yarmoshyna said 494 people filed applications to the CEC, but not all of them will be registered.

The CEC head shared her opinion in an interview for Sovetskaya Belorussia newspaper.

“We can say we have no constituencies with only one candidate. We have 11 constituencies with two potential candidates. 20 constituencies have three candidates. We also have two constituencies with 9 and 10 candidates,” Yarmoshyna says.

Political parties are Representative by 252 people. Syarhei Haidukevich's Liberal Democratic Party has the biggest number of nominees – 93 people. The United Civil Party (UCP) and Fair World Party proposed 48 and 32 candidates respectively.  

Yarmoshyna says the candidates are far from being “nation's elite”:

“For now, a rather large number of unemployed run in the election. Unfortunately, some of them represent political parties. There's a certain amount of people with a low social status, even if they have a job.

A profession of a gatekeeper can scarcely be attractive for voters. Someone even held a picket addressing to me 'Yarmoshyna, there's no difference between 'elections' for a collective farm and for 'parliament'”. You know, there's actually no difference taking into account the level of aspirants for parliamentary seats.”

The CEC head talked about her recent visit to an OSCE meeting in Vienna: “In my view, their democracy is well-organized bureaucracy involved in a play with public and mass media.  

But it's not so bad there. However much we criticize the West, we see grassroots democracy there in every community. They have church festivities, jumble sales, school festivals.”

Asked why so few people vote in France and Greece, the CEC head answered: “It's due to social discontent and absence of prospects.”