Mahiliou: Kastrychnitski district election commission recounted signatures for Niakliayeu and Mikhalevich
Barys Bukhel, human rights defender from Mahiliou
According to the human
rights defender Barys Bukhel, the Kastrychnitski District Election Commission
recounted the number of signatures that had been passed in support of the
nomination of Uladzimir Niakliayeu and Aliaksei Mikhalevich as candidates for
President of the Republic of Belarus. After this procedure the number of the
signatures for Mr. Niakliayeu became 614 more than the number that had been
passed to the commission by his campaign team, and the number of signatures for
Mr. Mikhalevich became 1,555 (instead of 1,727, the number received during the
first counting). The election commission explains this mistake as a purely
technical.
The head of the campaign team of Mr. Mikhalevich in Mahiliou, Yury Stukalau,
assumes that members of the campaign team could make a mistake while passing
the collected signatures to the district election commission. ‘I assume that we
could make a mistake while passing the signature sheets to the Kastrychnitski
District Election Commission, but the mistake couldn’t be that great,’ says Mr.
Stukalau.
Bear in mind that some time before this commission had calculated the passed
signatures in such a way that the number of the signatures in support of
Uladzimir Niakliayeu decreased by 1,220 signatures, while the number of
signatures for Aliaksei Mikhalevich increased to 1,727. However, after the
repeated counting the number of signatures for the latter candidate became
1,555.
The human rights defender Barys Bukhel points that such mistake is a result of
the law level of the training of members of the district election commission.
’There are no such problems in the Leninski District Election Commission, for
instance’, says the human rights defender. ‘It consists of experienced members,
unlike the Kastrychnitski DEC. By the way, opposition members weren’t included
in the latter commission because of ‘absence of experience’. However, now we can
see what experience do apolitical people have.’
Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections
