Zhodzina Authorities Take First Steps to Guarantee Free and Transparent Elections

A week ago public activists of Zhodzina applied to Zhodzina City Executive Committee with the demand to include them in the election commissions that are formed by the CEC. They followed all the legal procedures and collected the necessary number of public signatures to support their candidacies. The lists with signatures were passed to the executive committee. However, the CEC authorities deprived the people of the possibility to personally attend the sitting on which the commissions were formed. Moreover, they can’t even find about the results of the sitting.

Most probably, the sitting was made secret so that the public activists wouldn’t have enough time to complain against it and inform the public about this incident. Besides, it became known that the first vice-chair of the executive committee Uladzimir Siamashka took some organizational decisions on the applications of citizens that were not initiated by the “vertical”. The persons whose relatives tried to become members of election commissions on their own initiative, were also removed from the election commissions.

It’s worth mentioning that the member of A. Milinkevich’s initiative group, public activist Aliaksei Lapitski submitted an official application to the chair of Zhodzina CEC Vasil Hryshchanki, trying to find out the time of the sitting on forming of the polling station election commissions, but didn’t receive any answer. On 1 February Mr. Lapitski personally came to the CEC, but the duty policeman and a person in plain clothes didn’t let him in for invented reasons. On the phone Lapitski managed to find that a check-up from Minsk came to the CEC and its administration would be busy during the first half of the day. He received no answer whether the sitting took place or no.

However, from some other sources Mr. Lapitski managed to get the information the sitting took place on 9 a.m. After the dinner break he finally broke through to the reception room of the CEC. There he composed inquiries to the CEC and the election commission in order to get information about the results of the sitting. However, this information still remains secret.

According to the press service of the Assembly of NGOs