Marieluise Beck: There are no true elections in Belarus

The Bundestag and OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly member Marieluise Beck, who was denied a Belarusian visa, is following the situation from Germany. It is said in the statement that she disseminated, Radio Free Europe reports.

According to Marieluise Beck it is already clear that there can be no “real elections” in Belarus, as “democratic standards were broken already at the pre-election stage”.

“The opposition was practically not allowed to electoral commissions. That’s why independent counting was impossible and it was obvious that the acceptable for the dictator results were going to be announced”, - the statement says.

As Marieluise Beck points out, the early voting, which started on Tuesday, gave all the possible ways for manipulation with ballot boxes. According to a well-known tradition whole student dormitories and workers became early voters. This was done in order to prevent the turnout lower than 50% at which the elections are considered unsuccessful.

The German parliament member considers the current turnout in Belarus unprecedentedly low. Brutal crackdown on opposition and economic crisis are harming the regime. Apart from that ever since 1996 through a constitutional coup Lukashenka deprived the parliament of any power. There is low interest to the elections of the puppet parliament which is only able to nod along to Lukashenka. Correspondingly the regime reacts very nervously to the opposition’s calls to boycott the regime and introduce the strictest sanctions against it”.