EU Frustrated by Elections in Belarus 16:16, 14/03/2003
Greek chairmanship in the OSCE circulated a statement, passed at the March 13 session of the Permanent Council. “Izvestia” correspondent reports that the EU structures familiarized themselves with great interest with the OSCE mission’s report on March 2 elections in Minsk. EU welcomes the fact of the report’s creation, as far as the Belarusian CEC didn’t invite international observers to the elections.
The document positively evaluates the high turnout of voters, but there’s a range of alarming aspects to it. The high level of turnout at early voting allows to manipulate figures, as testified by previous OHIHR rapports: lack of opposition members in electoral commissions, supervision of employers over the voters at their jobs, unequal access to media and state funding, registration ban on trivial reasons and dismissal of candidates after the start of the early voting.
The report mentions that there occurred no changes in electoral legislation of Belarus since 2001 presidential elections whatsoever.
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