MEP: We Haven’t Received Answers To All Our Questions At Meeting With Yarmoshyna

The CEC representatives assured the MEPs that “everything is good” with the electoral legislation and there was no time to make amendments.

Yesterday, the delegation of the ruling fraction of the European Parliament, the European People’s party, met with the top officials of the Central Elections Committee. They discussed the upcoming parliamentary campaign in Belarus. Latvia’s MEP Sandra Kalniete has told tut.by about the results of the meeting in the Belarusian CEC.

According to the MEP, they tried to convey to Lidzia Yarmoshyna that “elections are not just a technical issue”.

— These elections will seriously affect the political relations between Belarus and the EU. I hope that she (Yarmoshyna) got our message right.

Kalniete has noted that the MEPs went through all the OSCE’s recommendations over the results of the last “presidential election”, during the meeting.

— We were trying to understand what had been and would be done before the elections. In the first place, we were interested in the voting procedure, counting of votes and summarizing of the elections results. We did not receive detailed answers to all our questions.

The MEP says that the CEC officials answered only that everything was already okay, or that there had been no precise demands of the OSCE on particular positions, or that there was no time for making any amendments.

— We talked about the necessity of equal conditions for the opposition, and they told us the conditions had always been equal and stayed equal.

Speaking about the impressions after the meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Alena Kupchyna, Kalniete has underlined that they have good working relations.

— She shows a very good understanding of the situation. Still, I also realize, being an official, she has only as wide a field for political move as Lukashenka provides her. We appreciate her efforts to normalize the relations between Belarus and the EU.

This year, the European Parliament hopes to participate in the elections observation in Belarus. The MEP has assured that the MEPs mission will come if they receive an invitation.

Sandra Kalniete represents the European People's Party, the ruling party in the European Parliament today. This fraction promoted the creation of a center-right coalition in the Belarusian opposition. Yesterday three MEPs and the opposition leaders held a joint roundtable. We ask how Kalniete assesses what is happening today in the opposition.

— I feel that the understanding of necessity to unite efforts around the democratic and pro-European values in order to avoid fragmentation of votes, is growing. After 20 years of constantly increasing pressure (the opposition) may find it hard to break through this frustration and learn how to compromise. Still, this remains the only way for the opposition and the civil society to prove that they are willing to work for the good of the Belarusian people.

The “parliamentary elections” should be appointed by Lukashenka in early June and will take place on September 11.