CEC chairperson Lidziya Yarmoshyna comments on the recognition of elections in Belarus.
"The OSCE is not an independent organization. It recognizes elections depending on the world leaders’ opinion. The world leaders in the OSCE are the United States and some big European countries,” Yarmoshyna told BelaPAN.
Speaking about the violations registered by independent observers at the local elections, Yarmoshyna stressed that they had to read the law: “Observers have no right to demand to cancel election results at a polling station. There is not such procedure in the law. It is possible to cancel election results in a constituency if the election results at a polling station could affect them. However, the decision can only be made by a district election commission and only candidates have the right to lodge the corresponding complaints,” the official noted.
29 000 observers were accredited at the local elections but only about a hundred lodged complaints, Yarmoshyna noted. “Some observers seem to get paid for their work. The more complaints they lodge, the more money they will get,” she said.
