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Central election commission promises access to ballot-counting process to OSCE/ODIHR observers

The central election commission has promised to provide the observation mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) with a "substantial and real opportunity" to monitor the vote count, the mission's head, Antonio Milososki, told BelaPAN on Monday.

Mr. Milososki said that while meeting with the central election commission, OSCE/ODIHR observers had raised the issue of denials of access to the ballot for parliamentary hopefuls. The observers made no distinction between opposition and pro-government hopefuls but simply pointed out that very little time had been given for contenders to remedy flaws in their papers, he said.

According to Mr. Milososki, the commission produced a document that specifies the procedure of forming district election commissions. The mission will publish its conclusions about the formation of the commissions and all other issues in its final report, he said.

The mission pointed out that there should be a standard procedure for verifying ballot-access signatures, but the commission replied that signatures were selected for verification at random, Mr. Milososki said.

The mission also suggested including representatives of independent media outlets in the Supervisory Council for Compliance with the Rules for Electioneering through the Media, which decides whether or not to television and radio addresses by parliamentary candidates should be broadcast, Mr. Milososki said.

As for censoring television addresses, some of which are not broadcast because they call for an election boycott, the commission said that such calls could not be part of televised addresses to voters but were not illegal, he said.

In general, although the mission thoroughly investigates every complaint it receives, it would be premature to make any conclusions about the parliamentary campaign at this stage, Mr. Milososki said.