BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

30/09/2008

CIS and OSCE observers differ on appraising Belarussian elections

MINSK. September 30. KAZINFORM It becomes a tradition when international observers from the CIS and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe appraise differently elections in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The regular elections to the new lower chamber of the Belarussian parliament, held in the country on September 28, have not become an exception.

“The West is disenchanted in the parliamentary elections in Belarus and cannot recognise them fully free and just,” is the essence of appraisals, given by heads of missions of OSCE international observers. The Organisation’s representatives, monitoring the election process, noted only “slight improvements” in democratisation of society.

According to observers, “some winds of changes” are observed in the election process. But one of the oldest problems in monitoring elections has not been settled: absence of transparency in ballot-counting.

OSCE observers were the last to express their opinion on the elections. But this does not mean that they expressed the final say. Slightly earlier, head of the CIS observer mission Sergei Lebedev stated quite unequivocally that the general elections in Belarus had passed in a highly organised manner and in full compliance with national legislations as well as with generally recognised international norms.

He did not conceal that Commonwealth observers exposed some shortcomings, but they “were of purely technical and organisational nature and could not influence the general process of the voting”. Approximately the same estimates were made by observers from the Belarus-Russia Union State.

As a result, the positions of the two largest and prestigious groups of observers turned to be nearly diametrically opposite. The truth here is not somewhere in-between. Chairman of the Russian Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov was evidently closer to it than others.

Assessing election processes in general and in Belarus in particular, he noted that each sovereign democratic country has its own democratic elections. It is difficult to compare them, and they should be never criticised, Kazinform cites ITAR-TASS.

Source:

http://www.inform.kz/showarticle3.php?lang=eng&id=170536