Before the Referendum the CEC “rehabilitated” former passports.

That happened on October 12 when during the CEC meeting the following issue was discussed - “About interpretation of part 2 of article 52 of the Electoral code”.

The issue was formulated in the following way: “How the phrase “the ballot paper is given to the voter, participant of the Referendum after (s)he submits passport or another identification certificate”.
In the CEC resolution on October 12 it is said that “ballot paper is given to the participant of the Referendum, voter by the member of district commission on the grounds of submission of the passport including former sample of the passport”.

In addition to the passport the following documents are eligible for getting ballot paper: pension certificate (if there is a photo on it), student ID, identification of a state employee, soldier’s ID (for soldiers)”.

This decision of CEC sparked off indignation of representatives of parties who are members of CEC without right to vote. So Uladzimir Nistsuk (BSDP) appealed to the CEC Chairperson with a proposition to register all candidates who were not registered because of presence of “more than 15% uncertain signatures” in the subscription list. In those cases the signatures of the owners of old passports were considered invalid and became grounds for denial in registration of the candidate.

CEC Chairperson Lidzia Ermoshyna declared: “We all are interested in participation of many people in the elections”. And the secretary of CEC, Mikalai Lazavik, added: “We must give the right to vote to all citizens of Belarus if they are in the lists of voters”.

CEC member without right to vote, Ales Bialiatski, commented the CEC decision the following way: “CEC started to use double standards in strange way. The signatures of the people with old passports were considered to be invalid during the collection of the signatures and gave grounds for denial in registration to some candidates. And now the holders of the same old passports can participate in the elections. So why then they were invalid before? I consider that to be absolute legal nonsense. CEC decided to violate the decision of Council of Ministers, October 29, 2002, which announced passports of 1979 and 1993 invalid. Why? We can only guess that. Most likely it was done to multiply the number of voters. Taking into consideration that the holders of the old passports are quite old and traditionally constitute the electorate of Lukashenka CEC decided that their voices during the Referendum will be given in favor of Aliaksandar Lukashenka”.

“SPRING” INFORMATION DEPARTMENT