«Common» violations of election regulations were reported at polling stations on main voting day, Belarusian Popular Front leader says :: Charter'97 :: News

Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) members reported "common" violations of election regulations at polling stations on January 14, the main voting day in Belarus` local elections, the party`s chairman, Vintsuk Vyachorka, told reporters in Minsk on Tuesday.

BPF observers were denied any information about the number of early voters by poll workers, he said. "From my point of view, this was done to manipulate the results of early voting. Observers monitoring vote count at polling stations stood three to 15 meters away from the table where ballots were and poll workers nearly formed a `soccer wall` around the table, standing with their backs, not faces, to the observers. It`s just impossible to control vote count in such conditions," Mr. Vyachorka noted.

The BPF leader criticized the practice of putting coworkers into the lineup of a precinct election commission, with their boss named as the commission`s chairman as a rule. "It`s clear what result can be anticipated in such a situation," he stressed.

Mr. Vyachorka said he had not even bothered to learn the official vote results in the Miroshnichenkovsky election district where he was on the ballot.

"I know the general trend: precinct commissions gave 10-11 percent to our candidates. So the results in my district are not important for me, at least because the results suggest that I got fewer votes than voters` signatures collected in the 2004 parliamentary elections. And this just couldn`t happen," the politician said.

A total of 40 BPF candidates remained in the race for local soviets till the main voting day, one of the highest levels among opposition parties, according to Mr. Vyachorka.

Vintsuk Vyachorka said that the January 9-14 local elections were a formality for both the government and the opposition.

"At the very beginning, we did not call this elections," he said at a news conference in Minsk on Tuesday. "For us, this was a political campaign called `Local Elections.` For the authorities, this was a campaign that they had to conduct to show at least some legitimacy of government institutions."

"The public however did not get the impression that this was an important event in their life," he stressed.

The politician said that voters had little interest in the campaign because they "perfectly understand" that the local soviets in the country do not have real powers and do not distribute local government finance in accordance with the actual needs of the local community.

He pointed to the low turnout recorded by pro-opposition observers and recalled talks that he had held with people when visiting their apartments in Minsk and travelling to other places in the country as an electioneering agent of local candidates.

"People are not interested in the local elections. They are more interested in the oil and gas dispute with Russia and related things, such as wages, pensions, the economic situation and jobs. As for the elections, they had little interest in it. All were concerned about gas and oil. Nobody asked about pavements and bulbs in their halls."

"We foresaw a gas and oil row with Russia as far back as May 2006 and already then, prepared an anti-crisis program. Unfortunately, we were right. That is why our talks with the population were efficient," Mr. Vyachorka went on to say.

The politician stressed that the local election campaign had provided opposition activists with the opportunity to distribute leaflets, appear on radio and meet with voters.

He said that the BPF would continue effort to explain people the reasons behind the recent damaging row between Belarus and Russia but noted that reaching out to people would be much harder now that the election campaign had been over.