Local Elections Can be Held according to New Rules :: Charter'97 :: News

The law on “Amendments to some laws of the Republic of Belarus on questions of elections and referendum” is being prepared for consideration in the first hearing of the “Chamber of representatives” of the “national assembly” of Belarus. The Electoral Code, the laws “On President of the Republic of Belarus” and “On public events in the Republic of Belarus” are to be amended at the first plenary session in autumn, which is to start in the beginning of October.

As the “Zvyazda” was told by the deputy chairman of the commission on state construction, local self-governing and rules of procedure of the Belarusian parliament Halina Mazurkevich, the document contains changes and amendments to more than 60 articles on issues of holding elections and referendum. In particular, Article 8 of the law “On president of Belarus”. It would become shorter: “Term of office of president is 5 years”, and the words “one and the same person could be a president not more than two terms” are crossed off.

At the same time, a part of amendments is rather important. One of those amendments concerns of the second voting in the elections of local Soviets’ deputies. Now the candidate to local Soviets is considered to be elected in the first voting in a constituency when he received more than a half of votes of voters who had taken part in the ballot. The new version of the law looks the following way: “A candidate to local Soviet is considered elected when he got the majority of votes of voters who had taken part in the ballot, in case the ballot had been found legitimate. When holding a vote on one candidate, the candidate is considered elected when he receives more than a half of votes of citizens who had taken part in the ballot”.

Amendments to the 46th article of the Electoral Code are made. According to them, the term for publicizing results of opinion polls connected to elections, referendum, their results’ forecasts, are changed. In today’s law the term is 10 days, while amendments shorten this term to 5 days.

Article 48 is expanded by a new clause: “Using money or other material aid by a candidate for presidency, to the parliament, or a person nominated to become a candidate, in breach of the part 10 of this law, is punished by denial to register a candidate, or cancellation of the decision of his registration”. This can be caused by direct or indirect participation in financing of a foreign state, enterprise, organization, international organization, a foreign citizen, a Belarusian enterprise with foreign investments.

The status of an observer is redefined by the draft law as well (Article 155 of the Electoral Code). Instead of the words defining the notion “observer” as “a person authorized by a political party, other public association, a labour collective, citizens”, new variant is proposed: “a member of a political party, other public association, a labour collective, a representative of citizens”.