Baranavichy: observers asks prosecutor to discriminate into forgery of minutes of commission's sitting

Election observer Siarhei Housha is convinced that the head of constituency election commission #5 Tatsiana Latyshava and its secretary Tatsiana Latyshava have forged minutes of sitting #1 of the commission.

Mr. Housha came to this conclusion after analyzing the commission's work during the first days. As a result, on 14 August Siarhei Housha applied to the city's prosecutor concerning the forgery of the minutes of the first sitting of constituency election commission #5.

In his statement to the prosecutor Mr. Housha states that in July 2012 he attended the first sitting of the commission as an observer and studied the minutes of the sitting, signed by the head and the secretary of the commission. He noticed some discrepancies with the actual situation. At first, he asked to be provided with a copy of the minutes in the oral form and then also filed a written request. However, the commission refused to show him the minutes again and took no measures to correct the situation.

Siarhei Housha supplies his application to the prosecutor's office with materials witnessing the forgery of the minutes of sitting #1:

1) according to the minutes, 13 members of the commission voted during the election of the head, the deputy head and the secretary of the commission. However, in fact only 11 people were present, which is witnessed by the photos presented by Mr. Housha. The commission members Viktar Bukhman and Liudmila Kukharskaya were absent from the sitting.

2) According to minutes #1, the sitting was held on 11 July 2012, whereas according to the observer, it was held at 3 ap,m. on 10 July in the small hall of the Baranavichy City Executive Committee, which can be proved by the date of the registration of an excerpt from the sitting of the Belarusian Language Society according to which he was nominated as an election observer to the commission, and the announcement about the sitting at the website of the Baranavichy City Executive Committee.

3) The minutes don't indicate the persons who nominated the head, the deputy head and the secretary of the commission (Housha attaches a copy of minutes #1 of the election commission).

At the end of his application to the prosecutor's office Mr. Housha states that these defects could be called mistakes if they had been corrected after his address to T. Latyshava. However, as far as she refused to admit that there were any mistakes in the minutes of the sitting and refused to show them to the observer, it can be regarded as a purposeful forgery of the minutes and the wish to conceal this fact from the observer and the public.

The observer states that in the case the forgery of election documents is not stopped at the very beginning, there are no guarantees that the election at Baranavichy-Western election constituency #5 will be honest and fair. Moreover, the observer composed an act about the forgery of minutes #1 of constituency election commission #5 and is going to submit it to the Central Election Commission.

Siarhei Housha asks the prosecutor to hold a check-up of the stated facts and take the due measures towards the violators of the Electoral Code of the Republic of Belarus.

In the photo: Tatsiana Latyshava at the first sitting of election commission #5 (first on the left)

“Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”