Belarus parliament elections

MINSK, 17 May (BelTA) – Members of the European Parliament expressed their intention to come to Belarus to observe the country’s parliamentary elections in 2016, Chairperson of the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Belarus Lidia Yermoshina told media on 17 May, BelTA has learned.

According to Lidia Yermoshina, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is expected to send official letters to all the international established monitoring organizations. “They will form missions independently. These can be missions of the OSCE, CIS, and the Council of Europe. The European Parliament which is an organization of the European Union has also voiced its intention to take part in the observation,” she noted.

Representatives of the European Parliament have already asked Belarus’ CEC Chairperson this question. “Since it is not the prerogative of the Central Election Commission to invite international observers, I have redirected them to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We invite only heads and members of election commissions of other states,” Lidia Yermoshina said. As for the central election commissions of the EU countries, the Belarusian CEC sends invitations only to the central election commissions of Lithuania and Latvia.

At today’s meeting of the Central Election Commission in Minsk Lidia Yermoshina touched upon the OSCE/ODIHR recommendations in connection with the forthcoming parliamentary elections. In her words, 22 recommendations out of 30 require amendments to the election laws and cannot be implemented at the moment as the election campaign is already underway in the country. A number of proposals and remarks will be implemented through the improvement of the law enforcement practices. One of the recommendations pertains to the necessity to provide the observer with an opportunity to monitor the vote count. “It is one of the OSCE fundamental requirements,” Lidia Yermoshina said.

Consideration of electoral disputes will be made more transparent. This means that all decisions of election commissions adopted in connection with complaints must be published online – posted on an Internet site. Another obligatory condition is increasing the openness of meetings of the executive bodies as they select members to the election commissions. “The novel concepts that made part of the methodological explanations are primarily the recommendations of international electoral experts,” Lidia Yermoshina noted. She also stressed that the CEC instruction is binding for the commissions at the local level.

Today the Central Election Commission approved all the fundamental documents which the precinct and district election commissions will be guided by during the forthcoming parliamentary elections which are scheduled for 11 September 2016.