Mahiliou pro-dem forces report on election results

Yesterday, on 26 April, the pro-democratic forces of Mahiliou held a press-conference, presenting their results of the election campaign monitoring.

According to preliminary figures, only two pro-democratic candidates were elected deputies of Mahiliou regional local councils – Zhanna Shcharbinina and Aliaksei Tsiulkou (both representing the Belarusian Christian Democracy).

’51 persons were registered as candidates in Mahiliou region. Some of them were simultaneously running for councils of two levels. Only one local candidate quit the campaign – BPF activist Zmitser Salayuiou,’ says the Mahiliou Pro-Dem Forces’ regional election monitoring coordinator Yury Novikau.

‘After none of the pro-dem representatives was elected member of the election commission, we realized that the elections would not be transparent. It should be noted that, under the current legislation, the local election commissions are formed by the administrations of town’s and cities’ districts, while there were no actual meetings of these commissions. We tried to attend the meetings, but we were constantly deceived on their dates. As a result, we were simply informed that the meetings had taken place.’

Yury Novikau added that during the verification of signatures collected by the campaign teams of pro-dem candidates, the commissions were extremely faultfinding, which in a number of cases was the official reasons for refusing registration.

Apart from that, the coordinator stressed that the official turnout results failed to reflect the actual figures, since the pro-dem observers maintained independent vote counting on the day of the election.

‘For instance, on the election day, polling station #113 was visited by 335 voters, while the official report names a different figure – 1,101 persons; #114 – 310/856; #115 – 248/658.’

The figures are confirmed by the head of the Mahiliou Human Rights Center Uladzimir Krauchanka, whose representatives acted as independent observers at three Mahiliou polling stations.

All these data say that voter turnout in the city was overstated by an average of 200%.

The local human rights activist Barys Bukhel says that the final results of vote counting were first taken to the administrations of the city districts before their submission to the constituency election commission.

‘Human Rights defenders for Free Elections’