A week before the election

Vybary

The election campaign came into the straightaway: already in a week the country will have the next portion of the people's representatives in the seats of the lower house of the Belarusan Parliament.

Red and green banners in the streets, stands in public places designed per sample, dull prints in mailboxes, news’ snatches on the radio and TV – according to the extent of possible and necessary, Belarusans are still being recalled that it is the day of September 23 that the country is going to have an important event entitled Election of deputies to the House of Representatives of the National Assembly.

A week before the big day on the eve of elections and early voting (from September 18 to 22), the EuroBelarus Information Service recalls how the current election campaign have proceeded.

They have done their duty

Against the background of the hot, though not always meaningful disputes concerning the participation or non-participation in the parliamentary elections, only two parties were distinguished by the particular positions, namely the Belarusan Popular Front and the United Civil Party. Their members announced their participation in the election campaign only for the time being. And both parties have kept their word – at the Congress of the BPF and at a UCP session, on September 15, their candidates from these parties were removed from the race.

It is worth noting that the Popular Front and the United Civil Party have initially presented their plans for a partial participation in the election campaign - their intention to withdraw the candidates before the start of the early voting have been known in advance. Some political analysts have suggested that it is exactly timely voiced intentions not go to the end that allowed to obtain candidates’ registration to a rather large number of opposition-minded the BPF and the UCP members.

Not so smooth was the fate for those politicians, whose plan was to fully participate in the elections: registering as candidates failed the leader of the Movement For Freedom Aliaksandr Milinkevich, Mikhail Pashkevich, representative of the campaign "Tell the truth!", the former chairman of the Belarusan Social Democratic Party (Hramada) Anatoly Levkovich, and other known opposition politicians.

Special resonance was caused by a failure to register as candidate of Aliaksandr Milinkevich, who has recently declared his readiness to be the only democratically-minded member of the House of Representatives of the new convocation.

All according to plan

In other respects, the campaign took place according to a very standard scenario. Already in September the Supreme Court have continued to receive complaints about the refusal to register as candidates, but the know-how of the campaign - the TV debates - were somewhere canceled purely due to problems with the equipment and for technical reasons.

Out of the total number of television appearances there were only few candidates to be kept in mind. Artist and deputy chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party Eugene Kryzhanovsky advised during TV debates his female opponent to learn how to cook borsch, and the United Civil Party leader Anatol Lyabedzka proposed all officials and other ideologues to try wearing one Pampers for three days. In an interview with the EuroBelarus Information Service, Anatol Lyabedzka affirmed that in the five-minute TV speeches of candidates it would be difficult to make the parliamentary elections intense and let people decide whom to vote for.

However, the inevitable boredom of the whole election campaign has been pronounced beforehand by many experts. In particular, the director of the Centre for European Transformation Andrei Yahorau has noted that "when there are no elections, then there is nothing to struggle for. And when there is nothing to struggle for, there is no competition and, accordingly, there will be neither creative steps, nor quality. Therefore, we shall see quite boring, already familiar to us performances, in former theses". Skeptical Andrei Yahorau has also been about the controversy about the full participation or non-participation in the elections, noting that both advocates of participation in the elections and boycott supporters still have been just extras of the campaign performance.

Caring about voters

Traditionally active in the information field has been the head of the Central Election Commission Lydia Yarmoshina. Her statement that the agitation in the courts disturbed citizens caused confusion for many, including the experts. The head of the Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend” Elena Tonkacheva even noted the complete lack of indicators of the election campaign to the Parliament that is currently taking place in Belarus.

But Lydia Yarmoshina never ceased to bend the line and expressed the view that a regulation should be introduced in Belarus that would prohibit candidates to campaign for the boycott of the elections. In response, the chairman of the Belarusan Helsinki Committee, a representative of the campaign "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" Aleh Hulak said that the proposal of the Central Election Commission (CEC) on the ban on campaigning for a boycott by candidates contradicts the Belarusan Constitution and endangers Belarusan society.

Attention to the observers

National election observers have been accredited even in number of 3690, and the CEC secretary Nikolai Lozovik has expected the OSCE international observers would assess the progress of the preparation and conduct of the parliamentary elections, but not the accompanying political events.

The CEC representative spoke with obvious warmth of the last meeting with the head of the OSCE ODIHR, "Antonio Milososki assured that there weren’t any problems to date in the work of the observers’ work. They have the opportunity to meet with representatives of the government, district and precinct commissions, as well as with the candidates, representatives of political parties and public associations". And this was despite Lydia Yarmoshina’s long-ago expressed belief that the OSCE’s parliamentary elections’ assessment in Belarus will be of political, not of legal nature.

But the CIS observers have reported routinely with confidence and optimism: the campaigning period is taking place in full compliance with the electoral law. But as the head of the Board of the International Consortium EuroBelarus Uladzimir Matskevich has noted, “the CIS Observation Mission for the parliamentary elections cannot be trusted”.

Waiting for the results

Uladzimir Matskevich has already shared with the EuroBelarus Information Service his expectations from the upcoming elections, "Personally, I expect that as a result of the parliamentary elections and the whole situation around this campaign, a part of incapable and unnecessary political branches, offshoots and build-ups on the opposition body will die. Of course, many false political and false oppositional bodies will still continue to be promoted and established, but some of them will however die. It's like a severe winter that not only harms to agriculture, for example. Harsh cold weather freezes weak plants, but tempers strong ones. And we can expect roughly the same results from the upcoming elections".

And the citizens of Belarus, in addition to all sorts of expectations from the upcoming elections, have also possibility not only to take or not to take part in future expression of popular will, but also to have fun by participating in the contest for the best photos and videos on the subject of parliamentary elections to the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus. The competition is held in three categories. As reported by the organizers, a special prize is prepared for the author of the best satirical Photoshop contest picture. And it seems that the results of this competition are fraught with far more intrigue and mystery, rather than the outcome of the upcoming elections.