Vitsebsk: journalist not invited to sittings of district election commissions

Leanid Svetsik got registered at the Kastrychnitski, the Pershamaiski and the Chyhunachny district election commissions of Vitsebsk as an independent journalist. Now he has to compose complaints: he hasn’t missed three sittings of the Pershamaiski and the Chyhunachny DECs already as he wasn’t invited to them.

Mr. Svetsik doesn’t have such pretensions to the Kastrychnitski DEC: ‘I got registered there, left my telephone number, and they phone me and warned about each sitting. They have held three sittings since 29 October, when I got registered there. It means that other DECs were to have held the same number sittings. However, the commission members didn’t consider it necessary to invite me to these events.

In his complaints Leanid Svetsik asks the administrations of the Pershamaiski and the Chyhunachny district election commissions about the reasons for such negligence. ‘I missed a very important stage of the work of the DECs – the verification of the signatures in support of the potential candidates for President. I still haven’t been familiarized even with the results of this work: I received a denial when I addressed with such request to the Pershamaiski DEC,’ said Mr. Svetsik.

Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections