Brest: names of candidates published at last

The registration of candidates for the elections ended on 25 March, but the lists of the candidates for the Brest regional Council of Deputies were published only on 31 March, whereas the timing schedule of the elections, adopted by the Central Election Commission, provides that such information must be published no later than the fourth day after the registration.

The interested people, knowing about the legally established terms for publishing such information, tried to find the surnames of the registered candidates in the local editions for 29 and 30 March, but didn't find anything there.

Having looked through the state-owned newspapers, human rights defender Uladzimir Vialichkin phoned to the Brest regional territorial election commission and asked where he could find the needed information. He was told that it was available at the website of the Brest regional executive committee and was also advised to address the district state-owned editions and the constituency election commission.

In our country, websites are a source of information that is accessible to a limited number of people. The information about the candidates was published in press (Viacherni Brest, #35) only on 31 March 2010. Thus, the local authorities violated the legally established terms, as a result of which the local citizens were deprived of the possibility to timely receive the information that concerns a significant stage of the electoral process.

Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections