European news sources report that non of the opposition parties' candidates made it into the parliament. And the opposition complains that this have not been "elections".
Taking this into acount, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, the head of the Belarussian Central Electoral Commission, made this cynical statement:
"All elections in Belarus were held democratically, but the only thing is that election processes are viewed in a different way"
Update:
The preliminary statement by the OSCE/ODIHR observers leaves no doubt about the lack of democracy displayed in yesterday's vote:
"Despite some minor improvements, the 28 September parliamentary elections in Belarus ultimately fell short of OSCE commitments for democratic elections"So, even if if Mrs. Yarmoshyna perceives that democracy means something else in Belarus, this something else falls short of international standards and the commitments made by Belarus itself. Not surprising, but now officially put on paper by the election observers.
If you want to read the full OSCE statement, you can do it here.
Read also:
- Douglas' article
- Dániel's article
2 comments:
I think that the 'results' of the 'election' is a bit surprising. Many thought that Lukashenko will make some concessions to his opposition to be more acceptable to his non-Russian neighbors after the Russian's invasion in Georgia. But he did not.
Okay, in that sense you might call it "surprising", but looking at the general picture of the state of democracy in the country, it is not too surprising either.
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