Yarmoshyna says everything is “predictable”

The EU blacklisted head of the Belarusian Central Election Commission (CEC) accounted for another stage of the election campaign.

The CEC head, Lidzia Yarmoshyna, said at a press conference in Minsk that the “parliamentary campaign” would go predictably, Interfax news agency reports.

“In general, everything is rather predictable,” Yarmoshyna said.

“It's pleasant that amendments to legislation adopted in 2010 work well,” she noted.

According to Yarmoshyna, a “positive result” was caused by simplification of the procedure of nomination of party candidates, which resulted in the increased number of party nominees in the elections.

She reminded that grounds for denial of registration were “only significant mistakes in assets and income declarations”.

Yarmoshyna noted the average candidate for a parliamentary seat became older.

“I think the average candidate became older. There were more young people under 30, especially on the primary level,” she said.

“Most candidates are from 30 to 50 years old,” she added.

Asked by journalists to describe the average candidate, Yarmoshyna said: “We have very different candidates. What can a head of the executive committee, an unemployed person from a radical party, a small businessman and a gatekeeper have in common?”

The number of party nominees grew 4 times in comparison with the previous parliamentary election, Yarmoshyna says.

“There are 204 party nominees. It's a lot. In 2008, we had 50 candidates proposed by parties. The growth is 400%,” Yarmoshyna sadi.

The CEC head preferred not to mention that most opposition candidate plan to withdraw from the elections ahead of the voting day.

We remind all election campaigns under Alyaksandr Lukashenka's rule were recognized non-free and unfair by international observers. CEC irreplaceable head Lidzia Yarmoshyna was banned from entering the EU and the US for this reason.