Sluck: 8 minutes to form election commission
On July 22, the Presidium of the Sluck District Council of Deputies and the representatives of the Sluck District Executive Committee formed a territorial election commission in just eight minutes. There was no discussion of the candidates, and most of that time was spent on quoting excerpts from the electoral legislation.
“According to a representative of the executive committee, there were 16 nominees to the commission, of whom someone selected thirteen before the meeting. No discussion of applicants during the meeting. None of the participants of the meeting even asked why exactly precisely those people were selected and not others. The names of the three rejected candidates were not even announced,” says Vital Amialkovich, a representative of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, who attended the meeting. “After the meeting, I was trying to see the protocols of the nomination of candidates to the commission, but I was not allowed to do it.”
All the selected members of the Sluck district election commission in one way or another represent the government. Ten of the thirteen members were members of the election commission during the local elections in 2014. For the director of a local social service center Volha Zhohla this is the third time she is working in the electoral commission. It is interesting that now she was nominated by collecting signatures, while in previous elections she was a representative either of the Red Cross or a labor collective. According to Vital Amialkovich, such manipulations are necessary to comply with the formal requirements of the Electoral Code about the quantitative and qualitative composition of the commissions.
Meanwhile, not a single representative of the opposition has become a member of the commission.
