Rights campaigners claim rigging in Belarusian early voting
MINSK. Sept 11 (Interfax) - Experts from Human Rights Campaigners for Free Elections, who monitored all stages of early voting in the Belarusian parliamentary elections, have noticed no progress in comparison with the previous election cycles.
"The results of monitoring all stages of the early voting by Human Rights Campaigners for Free Elections experts showed no progress in comparison with the previous election campaigns. As previously, early voting was stage-managed by the administrations of enterprises, institutions, universities and local executive authorities," the campaign said in a final report on the results of monitoring the early voting.
In some cases, "the organizing of voters into participating in the early voting combined with elements of control over their participation in the voting and threats to apply all sorts of disciplinary sanctions," the campaigners said. "This is a gross violation of citizens' constitutional rights and the principle of free participation in elections, and runs counter to the international principles of holding free and democratic elections," they said.
Coercion and the stage-managed nature of the early voting was the most widespread violation registered by the campaign group at more than 18% district election commissions (DECs), the group said.
The second most widespread violation was data inconsistency between the monitors and the DECs.
These tended to overstate the turnout rate by 14% in general over the five days of early voting, the campaigners said, adding that during five-day early voting in the 2012 parliamentary elections the figure was 10.4%.
The observers also noted instances of interference in the work of more than 14.44% DECs.
Overall, the practice of early voting "remains one of the systemic problems of the electoral process, creating broad ground for all kinds of possible manipulations and falsifications," the campaign group said.
Early voting was held September 6-10. The turnout was 31.29%, the CEC said.
This Sunday is the main voting day.
Human Rights Campaigners for Free Elections was set up by activists from Belarusian Helsinki Committee and Vesna (Spring), an unregistered human rights center.
They monitored the early voting at more than 182 DECs (3% of the total number).