Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections

In accordance with the Electoral Code, early voting opened on September 6.

A significant level of campaigning activity is demonstrated by the pro-government candidates, who still use the administrative resource, including state-controlled electronic and print media.

The OSCE ODIHR official website published yesterday an interim report by an observation mission deployed in Belarus to observe the parliamentray elections scheduled for September 11. The report covers the period from 2 to 26 August 2016.

On September 11, the parliamentary elections will culminate in Election Day, which, in turn, will end with vote counting, a procedure of extreme secrecy, according to election officials. Meanwhile, it is the vote count that has traditionally triggered fierce criticism of both domestic and international observers, not to speak of opposition candidates running for Parliament. The observers’ recommendations are that the vote counting procedure needs more transparency.

The Belarusian Central Election Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have not yet replied to a request asking for the invitation of an ENEMO mission to observe the parliamentary elections scheduled for September 11, according to ENEMO Secretariat.

Members of the campaign Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections have summed up the first half of the observation of this year’s parliamentary elections.

There were cases of abusing administrative resources in favor of pro-government candidates, as well as pressure on members of opposition candidates’ nomination groups.

The Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections civil campaign announces a press conference to be held at 12:00, August 15 in the office of the HRC "Viasna" at the address: 8-26 vulitsa Miarzhynskaha.

A pre-electoral delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) visited Minsk to assess the election campaign and the preparations for the parliamentary elections to be held on 11 September 2016.

On August 9, the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, including the Special Rapporteur on Belarus Andrea Rigoni, met with representatives of the Belarusian civil society.

On August 8, the office of the Human Rights Center "Viasna" hosted a meeting of the OSCE ODIHR election observation mission with representatives of the Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections domestic observation campaign.

As in earlier elections, observers of the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” were, in most cases, denied the opportunity to observe the verification of signatures submitted in support of nominations.

The absence of legislatively fixed criteria for candidates to election commissions still results in a highly partial approach to the personal composition of these commissions.

710 commissions in Minsk include 8 502 people, 69.4 per cent from which are women. The majority are members of public associations – 6 968 people, including political party members – 2 630 people.

Within the campaign Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections, lawyer Pavel Sapielka analyzed possibilities for participants of parliamentary elections in terms of legislative norms that regulate financing of electoral campaign, and compared the results of the research with respective international standards. The conclusions show uneven financial standing for different candidates.