Lidziya Yarmoshyna ignores proposal of Vitsebsk human rights defender
Human
rights defender Leanid Svetsik applied to the Central Election
Commission with the proposal to introduce amendments to the Electoral
Code. In particular, he asked to supply Article 11 of the Electoral
Code with the notion of the legal status of election commissions. In
her answer the CEC head informed him that his application wouldn't be
considered on its merits.
"The consideration of the
proposals on amendment of the acting legislation, including electoral
legislation, doesn't belong to the powers of the Central Commission,
as far as the commission is a law-enforcement agency, not a subject
of the legal initiative", this was the explanation. It's quite
interesting that despite such absence of powers, the CEC deals with
the elaboration of the draft law on the introduction of changes and
amendments to the Electoral Code. "Our lawyers have already
started this work", stated Lidziya Yarmoshyna to a BelTA
correspondent in November 2012.
Mr. Svetsik thusly explained
the reasons for his appeal to the CEC: It's worth noting that in the
legislation of the neighboring Russia, for instance, election
commissions are defined as state organ, whereas there is no notion of
the election commission in our Electoral Code. Thus, in Belarus an
election commission is not an organization, not a state organ, but
nobody knows what," comments Mr. Svetsik.
"The
courts don't recognize the legal status of the commissions and cannot
punish their heads if the latter ones violate the rights and legal
interests of citizens", continues the human rights defender.
"Thus, during the 2012 there was a case in Vitsebsk, when the
head and the secretary of a constituency election commission violated
the Law "On Applications of Citizens and Legal Bodies".
However, it was impossible to restore the violated rights at court,
as far as according to the court ruling election commissions weren't
organizations, that's why the action of the law didn't spread on
them.
It's very said that the CEC didn't answer my proposal
for formal reasons. However, I think that the lawyers who work at the
amendment of the Electoral Code have understood the essence of the
legal collision to which I had pointed and will introduce the
appropriate amendments for its elimination," said Leanid
Svetsik.
"Vitsebsk
Viasna"