Opposition nominees for precinct election commissions rejected in nearly 100 percent of cases

A comment by editor Kirill Poznyak,

As many as 991commissions were set up in the Brest region, 1,113 in the Gomel region, 857 in the Grodno region, 1,160 in the Minsk region, 862 in the Mogilyov region, 1,000 in the Vitebsk region, and 656 in the capital city. Forty commissions will work abroad.

Under the Electoral Code, a precinct election commission can include five to 19 members depending on the number of voters on the register in the district. However, a commission's membership averaged out at 11 people.

Most of the commissions' members, 50.6 percent, were proposed by private figures and 36.4 percent by workers' collectives. Five percent are representatives of the district and city executive committees that formed the commissions.

As for representatives of political parties and non-governmental organizations, they account for just some eight percent of precinct commissions' total staff.

Very few members of the opposition were included in the commissions, although opposition parties had proposed representatives in almost each district. However, their efforts had no effect, as almost 100 percent of their nominees were denied membership.

For instance, none of the 37 people proposed by the Belarusian Party of Communists in Minsk's Kolasovsky district was admitted to precinct commissions. In Molodechno, the Belarusian Social Democratic Hramada had put up 36 people, but none of them passed the selection process. In Minsk, none of 27 representatives of the Belarusian Popular Front managed to get on the precinct commissions in the district where the party's leader, Vintsuk Vyachorka, intends to be on the ballot.

As one might have expected, if developments take such a course, the opposition would say that the government has placed the election campaign under its tight control to heavily use administrative pressure to achieve its ends. And this is what is actually happening.

The government's opponents say that vote counting in precinct election commissions will be done mostly by the same people who worked there during previous election campaigns. In other words, they are people whom the powers that be consider loyal and reliable. So, the outcome of voting in the first round on October 17 and the runoff round on October 31 is predetermined?

The authorities at the lowest level, which were responsible for forming precinct commissions, say that they chose people with experience of work on such commissions. But since oppositionists previously accounted for a negligible number of commissioners - 0.3 percent in the 2003 local elections - the conclusion naturally suggests itself that they will never be allowed to be involved in vote counting in the upcoming parliamentary elections.