„Last winter we were observing presidential elections in Ukraine. It is going to be interesting to compare how the same democratic procedure is organized in another big neighbor of Belarus and Lithuania, which is also an EU member state“, – says Mariana Iljina, the project director and the chairperson of the United Center of Initiatives for Belarus (JuBIC).
The project participants have gone through an intensive preparatory course by profound Belarusian, Norwegian and Lithuanian election and human rights experts. Upon arrival to Warsaw on Friday, they are going to listen to lectures by a member of the Polish Electoral Bureau on the election legislation and political situation in the country.
Elections following tragedy 
The project leadership notes the situation in Poland now is very specific.
“We guess Poland is still shocked by the death of the President and many members of government. We are going to do our best to be respectful and supportive, as it is going to be a pre-term election and maybe an emotional election”, – says the mission participant, political scientist Vadim Vileita.
He thinks Poland can be an example for young Belarusians of a country which has survived a disaster, lost the President and yet kept the stability and democracy. In Belarus, many people believe the President to be an irreplaceable and indispensable part of a political system.
“It shows that L’Etat Et Moi formula does not work in democracy, and the President in Poland is not the whole state. Democracy is about the system of procedures and values. It is to be credited to earlier presidents of Poland and also the late President Lech Kaczynski that they have not led the country to authoritarianism”, – says Vileita.
He things that these elections are going to show if Poland has already recovered after the disaster and is ready to get back to normality.
Unexpected destination
The mission participants are going to split to 10 groups on the Election Day. Each group is going to visit around 10 polling stations in Bialystok and some other places in Eastern Poland.
The observers are accredited with the Polish Electoral Bureau. On Monday, they are going to hold a press conference in Bialystok to present their findings and assess the transparency of the elections.
The mission is a part of international Election Observation: Theory and Practice project. It is mostly focusing on bringing young Belarusians to monitor elections in different countries, mostly neighboring ones, to gain some positive experience of election observation and democratic procedures.
They are also accompanied by some peers from Lithuania and Sweden.
Several missions have already been organized within the project, e.g. to Georgia, Norway, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
The participants who mostly are members of local NGOs also observed the so-called local elections in Belarus in April, though the procedure routinely fell short of accepted international standarts and can hardly be called a real election.
„Poland was not a planned destination for us this summer. They were planning to have elections only in autumn. However, a tragedy occured, and the Poles will have to turn out to the polling stations earlier. So Poland is an unexpected observation subject for us“, – the Chairperson of JuBIC Iljina says.
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The Election Observation: Theory and Practice project is implemented jointly by the United Centre of Initiatives for Belarus (JuBIC), Swedish International Liberal Centre (Silc), European Humanities University (EHU) and Belarusian Human Rights House in Vilnius (HRH). The course is offered as an optional course within the framework of the EHU academic program and will be included in students’ BA diploma.
The Polish mission is facilitated by the local partners: Centre for Civic Education Poland – Belarus and Radio Racyja.
