Minsk: places of work of members of almost all election commissions are kept in secret

Though the website of the Minsk City Executive Committee contains information about the composition of the Minsk City Election Commission and nine district election commissions, their places of work and official positions aren’t mentioned. One can only guess about the place of work of the people who were nominated to the commissions by workers of certain institutions or enterprises, but it is still unclear which positions these people occupy.

The website of the Minsk Regional Executive Committee, on the contrary, presents more exhaustive information about members of the Minsk Regional Election Commission, including the way of their nomination, the names of the organizations that nominated them to the commission, the places of their work and their official positions (most of them are ‘directors’ or ‘heads’ of institutions, i.e. they occupy leading positions). The commission members work in different spheres – medical and educational institutions, state organs and commercial ventures. The two oppositionists that were included in the commission, representatives of the Belarusian Leftist Party Fair World and the NGO BPF Adradzhenne are a pensioner and an unemployed. 

It’s quite interesting that the website of the Minsk District Executive Committee followed the way of the city, not the regional authorities, presenting no information about the positions of members of the Minsk District Election Commission. Only those readers who live in the Minsk district or work in the same sphere with members of the election commission can know that a pensioner who is the head doctor of a hospital was nominated to the election commission by the collective of the hospital, and some of the medics of the Minsk district have to combine their work with membership in the election commission. Such things usually remain a secret for an outside observer.

Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections