During the press conference, the representatives of the election observation campaigns “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”, “Right to Choose” and Electby answered the questions and shared their experince.

The head of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Aleh Hulak noted that observers of the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” did not record a single case, when the counting process was managed in a transparent and accessible way. According to observers, who covered 326 polling stations within the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”, 92.3% of the observers noted that the counting process was not open and transparent to all members of the election commissions and observers. 76.9% of the observers reported that they could not observe the vote counting.

At the beggining of the press conference the representative of the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” Uladzimir Labkovich noted, that he can only speak about the outcome of the presidential election with “certain sadness”.

“The elections started in rather unfavorable conditions, in a situation of ongoing repression, the presence of political prisoners and numerous facts of harassment against journalists,” he said. It was only in late August that the authorities suspended direct repressions, released political prisoners and ceased the persecution of journalists, civic and political activists.

According to Uladzimir Labkovich, in general the electoral process did not meet a number of key international standards for democratic and free elections despite certain positive actions of the authorities. “This was due to the lack of equal access to the media by all the candidates, absence of impartiality of election commissions, use of administrative resources in favor of the incumbent, coercion of voters to participate in early voting and the closed nature of a number of electoral procedures,” noted Uladzimir Labkovich. “The most important reason for criticism is the lack of transparency of vote count, which does not allow to consider the election results as reflecting the will of the Belarusian people.”

The human right defender Aleh Hulak agreed with Uladzimir Labkovich and added, that the voting result cannot be trusted.

“At all stages of the election campaign all the relevant processes and procedures were not sufficiently transparent, starting from the formation of election commissions. The procedure for the registration of candidates was not clear and transparent; the same applies to such important procedures as voting at home, early voting and voter lists. All of this was not available for the observers. And, of course, the procedure of the counting of votes, just like before, was arranged in such a way that not only observers, but also the majority of commission members could not be sure that the results were consistent with the ballots, i.e. they signed something they did not see and could not see, so they cannot be responsible for that,” said Hulak.

Dzianis Sadouski, a representative of the campaign Right of Choice, in turn, stressed that “the presidential election was neither free nor fair, with the counting of votes being nontransparent and the figures announced by the Central Electoral Commission not credible.” He also agreed with the conclusions of their colleagues on the electoral process. Taking into account that the observers were not allowed to see the protocols, the home voting was opaque, and other deviations, the “Right to chose” campaign, said Sadouski, could not recognize the results of these elections.

Considering all these facts, observers believe that the elections in Belarus are not free and democratic, and the election of the head of state does not reflect the will of the Belarusian electorate.

Summarizing the statements by the election observers, the moderator of the press Conference, EHU lecturer Tatsiana Chulitskaya said that after the elections journalists tend to ask what support Lukashenka actually had among the population. “The problem of Belarus is that nobody knows what kind of support he received due to technical violations that we have seen in the course of each campaign,” she said. According to Chulitskaya, it is the closed nature of the process that does not allow to talk about support of one candidate or another. “These results do not conform to the social structure of the Belarusian society,” said the political scientist.  

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According to official data, during the presidential election in Belarus, that was held on 11 October, Aliaksandr Lukashenka received 83.5% of the votes, which allows him to be the head of state during the fifth five-year term. Tatsiana Karatkevich received 4.4% of votes. The other two candidates – the chairman of the Belarusian Liberal Democratic Party Siarhei Haidukevich and the Supreme Ataman of the Belarusian Cossacks Mikalai Ulakhovich have got 3.3% and 1.7%, respectively. 

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