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OSCE election observation reports are written by bureaucrats, not observers, Belarus’ top election official says

 

OSCE final reports on countries’ elections are not written by observers themselves but by bureaucrats who perform these functions sitting in their rooms,” Lidziya Yarmoshyna, head of Belarus’ central election commission, said Tuesday, speaking at a meeting of the commission.

Mikalay Lazavik, secretary of the commission, pointed out that “any observer is able to familiarize himself with any stage of an election campaign and really assess the situation regarding elections.”

Mr. Lazavik complained that there was no leverage to influence observers. “A convention on election observation has been adopted within the framework of the CIS, but the OSCE does not have such a convention,” he said. “Sometimes we are faced with the fact that a report depicts the situation in a distorted manner, but we cannot influence this.”

Mr. Lazavik claimed that the OSCE leadership “rejects favorable assessments by observers and does not include them in the final report.” “I sincerely feel sorry for the honest observers who provided a positive assessment of elections in Belarus, but their opinion was ignored by the OSCE leadership,” he said.

In its final report on Belarus` December 14-19, 2010 presidential election, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said that the government had a considerable way to go to meet its OSCE commitments for democratic elections.

There was a lack of independence and impartiality of the election administration, an uneven playing field and a restrictive media environment, as well as a lack of transparency at key stages of the electoral process, the ODIHR concluded.

The OSCE/ODIHR hopes that it will receive an invitation from the Belarusian authorities to observe the country’s 2012 parliamentary elections, ODIHR Director Janez Lenarcic told reporters in December last year.

ODIHR hopes that the invitation will be sent in good time so that it could prepare for the observation, said Mr. Lenanrcic, speaking on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council’s meeting in Vilnius.

The Belarusian authorities earlier cooperated actively with ODIHR in improving national electoral regulations, and many presidential candidates acknowledged before the December 2010 election that a number of positive changes had been introduced, but everybody saw how it all eventually ended, he said.

Belarus has the right to set conditions for OSCE/ODIHR observation missions if they are invited to observe elections in the country, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, head of the central election commission, said in an interview with BelaPAN in March.

“The OSCE/ODIHR decides itself on the membership of an observation mission and asks OSCE participating states for an invitation to observe their elections, but one should not forget that while extending an invitation, a nation may set certain conditions,” Ms. Yarmoshyna said.

Speaking to the government’s news agency BelTA on March 7, Ms. Yarmoshyna suggested that Belarus should demand that representatives of the European Union’s member countries should not be on the OSCE/ODIHR observation mission for this fall’s parliamentary elections in response to the EU’s sanctions against the nation.

ODIHR spokesperson Jens-Hagen Eschenbacher said in response that as a participating state of the OSCE, Belarus had committed to inviting the ODIHR to observe its elections. It is impossible to imagine that the ODIHR would select observers and decide which states should be represented on its mission, Mr. Eschenbacher said.