Websites of executive committees fail to present adequate information about presidential election

Homel region

The Belarusian society keeps paying taxes for which the state officials live. Not all websites of the Belarusian executive committees (that are also financed from the budget) are updated timely and regularly. In particular, many of them lack information about the presidential election, despite the fact that they belong to the few official sources that must openly present such information to the electorate.

On 1 October the websites of the Mazyr, Kalinkavichy and Lelchytsy district executive committees contained information about the presidential election, but nothing was said there about its date. The information is presented in a form of a banner with the use of the colors of the official red-green flag and the state emblem, and the inscription ‘Election of President of Republic of Belarus’.

The main page of the website of the Homel Regional Executive Committee presents no information about the date of the election either.


Vitsebsk region

The website of the Liozna District Executive Committee contains no information about the election at all. It is an unprecedented case for the Vitsebsk region: the websites of all other district executive committees started special columns or put colored banners concerning the electoral events at the beginning of the electoral campaign.

On the other hand, the scope of information at the websites of other DECs differs greatly. In particular, the website of the Shumilin DEC presents the ruling of the Central Election Commission with information about the date of the election, the DEC ruling determining the places for collecting signatures in support of candidates for presidency and the ruling about the establishment of the district election commission. The website of the Lepel DEC says nothing about the district election commission, whereas the website of the Haradok DEC, on the contrary, contains even the list of the commission members and the timing schedule of the electoral events. The website of the Beshankovichy DEC presents to the readers only the decision about the prohibition to collect signatures in certain places of Beshankovichy.


Babruisk

There are four official websites in the town of Babruisk (Mahiliou region) – the website of the Babruisk Town Executive Committee, the site of its newspaper, Babruiskaye Zhyttsio, and the websites of the Leninski and the Pershamaiski district executive committees of Babruisk. The first three websites present information about the election, whereas the last one doesn’t offer anything to the readers (though as many as 114,000 people live in the Pershamaiski district).


Brest region

The majority of the websites of the Brest region ignore the presidential electoral campaign. As of 4 October, the information about the establishment of the district election commissions aw uploaded only to the website of the Luninets District Executive Committee (http://luninets.brest-region.by/). The websites of two more DECs (Ivatsevichy and Pinsk) present laconic information about the joint sittings of the DECs and the Presidiums of the district councils on formation of district election commissions.

The official websites of the remaining 13 DECs still don’t inform the electorate about the beginning of the electoral campaign.

Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections