Siarhei Alfer: What difference does it make when to schedule the elections

The reasons of Central Electoral Committee that suggested changing the date of the president elections don’t look convincing. What did authorities guide by: law requirements or political expediency?

The Central Electoral Committee has been assuring that another presidential elections are to take place in the middle of November 2015, even mentioning a specific date – Sunday, November 15.

On June 9 the head of the Central Electoral Committee Lidia Jarmoshyna after consultations with Aliaksandr Lukashenka suddenly voiced a new initiative: it is better to organize presidential election on October 11, and schedule them already on June 30, when the regular session of the House of Representatives is closing.

Reasons given by Jarmoshyna don’t sound too convincing. First, according to her, it won’t require special session of the parliament. Secondly, “in case of the second tour of elections the terms of electing a new head of state specified by the Constitution won’t be violated”.

What the Central Electoral Committee was guided by when suggesting a new term of holding the presidential elections, how will the future campaign be organized, the “EuroBelarus” Information Service discussed with Siarhei Alfer, an expert in the sphere of electoral law.

- How convincing is the first argument of Jarmoshyna, according to which there won’t be the need to gather an extraordinary parliamentary session in order to schedule the date of elections?

- It is too insufficient reason. It is very easy to gather an extraordinary session. The Council of the Republic, for example, is convened in order to make it possible to recall a senator and start a criminal case against it; and to convene a session of the House of Representatives is even easier. All the more that it won’t require particular expense.

- What about the second reason, which is to have enough time for holding a second tour of elections?

- It is a more forcible argument. All previous elections were planned with allowance fort he second tour of elections, while this year they forgot about it for some reason. Now they seem to recall that and counted the schedule of organizing the election campaign over, scheduling it one month earlier.

It’s neither good nor bad per se – at least all legal procedures will be observed. In case if the president isn’t elected during the first tour, there will be time for counting votes of the second tour. It won’t violate the constitutional requirement according to which a new president should be elected before the former one abdicates responsibility.

- I don’t quite believe that the Central Electoral Committee forgot to calculate the dates.

- We should ask Lidia Jarmoshyna this question. Most likely we didn’t. Perhaps, the Central Electoral Committee assumed that one tour would suffice in today’s situation, but later decided that Belarus is a democratic country and all democratic procedures should be observed. And for that reason the date of elections was changed with account for all possible electoral procedures.

- But Lukashenka’s inauguration took place on January 21, 2011. Even if the first tour would be taking place in November, there would be more than enough time for the second tour.

- About 10 days are given for the complete count of votes; second tour is scheduled in two weeks; i.e. the whole procedure takes about a month.

Shift of dates is still normal; though the preliminary results of election will be clear as soon as the next day. All can be done quickly; however, the Central Electoral Committee decided not to hurry this time.

What difference does it make when to schedule the elections? August is also fine from the point of view of electoral procedures. He who wants to start the electoral campaign will start it whatever time it is scheduled for.

- Could it happen so that the shift of the date of elections complicates the collection of votes for the presidential candidates, since this stage will happen when everyone’s having their vacations?

- Initiative groups of potential candidates that really want to take part in the campaign are being formed already. And now they can intensify their work. It would be much worse if the new date of elections was announced several days before.

Since everything is done as a preliminary, there should be no problems. If someone is getting ready for elections two weeks beforehand, such candidate is light-minded.

- Quite a lot of candidates have already announced about their presidential ambitions. What do you think, are their structures potentially ready to collect one hundred thousand votes?

- We can recall the presidential campaign of 2010, when 10 presidential candidates were registered. According to my calculations, only four have really gathered the required number of signatures, whereas all the rest used telephone directories. It is bad and immoral.

Presidential campaign is mobilizing different feelings, including the physiological need to stand out from the crowd. It is usually done by those, who present nothing themselves in hope of becoming notable. It is only done in Belarus.

We should treat it normally; the only abnormal thing to do is to violate electoral proceedings when signatures are collected and checked by the initiative groups and organizers of the elections.

- Lately the world witnesses a tendency when not very standard candidates take part in elections. In our country such candidate might be a “freeloader” Jury Shulgan. Can we stake on such candidate in Belarus?

- Situation is rather interesting. Basically, everyone can hand in an application about the registration of an initiative group and get a possibility to collect signatures and promote the candidate. It is, in the end, an interesting thing to do.

But whether such candidate will collect the required number of true signatures is unclear.

This year the situation with the possibilities of candidates is complicated: either only one of them will gather enough signatures (if we consider the president-elect); apart from him, only Tatsiana Karatkevich is likely to collect enough signatures – the resources of the structures that support her are likely to make it happen. As to the teams of other candidates, they are unable to collect one hundred thousand signatures efficiently, I think.