Well-known Belarusian Human Rights activist Uladzimir Labkovich Comments on Results of Election to Local Deputy Soviets

Belarus doesn’t have even minimal conditions for holding an election campaign. One can’t speak of equal opportunities for candidates if only 2 out of more than 500 representatives nominated by democratic community are included in election commissions, candidates and their initiative groups aren’t registered for far-fetched reasons and those who manage to obtain the registration are deprived of the right to hold a normal agitation campaign.

Democratic candidates to deputy seats were deprived of the opportunity to held electoral meetings in the places where their electors dwelled. It’s also worth saying that various obstacles in printing of the agitation leaflets and posters as well as their illegal confiscations ensued in the situation of practical absence of agitation campaign.

The procedure of early voting, manipulations with the number of electors, counting of votes in the conditions when observers are entirely deprived of possibility to see the process resulted in absence of even resemblance of transparency of voting and counting of votes. The authorities of all levels view elections not as a democratic procedure that is necessary for formation of state organs, but as a struggle against their opponents without any rules and laws and an extensive use of force and false.

This is also witnessed by repression of democratic activists, primarily youth, firings from jobs, harassment at places of study, arrests and illegal interrogations conducted by KGB workers.

In all this circumstances we need to state that elementary conditions of election process are completely absent in Belarus. That’s why the latest election to the local deputy soviets of Belarus contributes to the treasury of non-democratic, non-transparent and unequal elections. Pitifully enough, the present authorities lack any political will for even slight improvement of the election process.’