ODIHR issues final report on Belarus' presidential election, repeats criticism

Minsk, 7 June. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on June 7 issued its final report on the March presidential election in Belarus, repeating its earlier conclusion that the campaign failed to meet the OSCE standards for democratic elections.
The ODIHR also issued more than 50 recommendations that the country needs to implement to meet the standards.
The recommendations cover the legal framework, voting regulations, the registration of candidates and voters, campaigning and its funding, media, complaints and appeals, vote counting, the tabulation of election results and election observation.
The ODIHR says that "a commensurate level of political will" is needed for the implementation of the recommendations.
In its report, the ODIHR says that the presidential campaign was marred by arbitrary use of state power, the harassment of campaign activists and biased media coverage.
"State power was employed arbitrary against opposition candidates, thwarting their campaign efforts. Throughout the campaign, opposition campaign workers were routinely harassed, detained and arrested," the report says. "Civil and political rights guaranteed by the Constitution were disregarded... Belarusian broadcast media granted incumbent President Lukashenko extensive and favourable coverage. Other candidates received an extremely narrow coverage of their views."
The ODIHR says that the country's Electoral Code restricts candidates' ability to campaign effectively and voters' ability to freely receive information. It says the procedure of early voting lacked necessary transparency.
Nikolai Lozovik, secretary of the central election commission, slammed the report as politically motivated and said that it cannot serve as a ground for canceling the election results. "All sanctions stemming from the report have already been imposed," he said.
The official went on to say that one should rather accuse the ODIHR of "falsifying" the observation results rather than election officials of fraud.
He criticized the ODIHR for its refusal to show the report to the central election commission before its publication. "We learn about the adoption of the document from the media as usual," he said. "The ODIHR is a more closed institution than the CIA and the KGB combined."
He said that there were a number of "inaccuracies" in the ODIHR's preliminary conclusions, noting that the central election commission did not "even" know whether or not the inaccuracies had been removed from the final report.