MINSK - Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) observers said on Monday that they had found no breaches of election law during preparations for elections for the House of Representatives, the lower house of Belarus' parliament.
“The Commonwealth observers point out that the nomination and
registration of candidates has stayed within the limits of election
legislation, has been based on principles of alternativeness and
competitiveness, and has been more active than was the case before
previous parliamentary elections,” the head of the CIS observer mission
in Belarus, Yevgeny Sloboda, told reporters in Minsk.
Sloboda said mission members had attended meetings of every third
constituency election commission at which candidates were registered.
“In their opinion, all the candidates had been given identical legal
conditions, and there were identical criteria for registration,” he
said.
Candidates who were denied registration had the opportunity to appeal
to the Central Election Commission. “Forty-eight of the 122 candidates
who weren’t been registered have exercised this right,” Sloboda said.
Nor did the setting up of constituency election commissions involve
any offenses, he claimed. “One indication of this is the fact that there
have only been 26 appeals against the decisions of authorities that
have set up election commissions, whereas there are 6,031 constituency
commissions,” he said.
