OSCE SAYS BELARUSIAN ELECTIONS 'SIGNIFICANTLY SHORT' OF DEMOCRATIC STANDARDS...
Published:
20 October 2004 y., Wednesday
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Vice President Tone Tinsgaard, who led an OSCE short-term monitoring mission for the 17 October legislative ballot, said on 18 October that the elections fell "significantly short" of Belarus's OSCE commitments.
The OSCE refused to monitor the presidential referendum held the same day, even though it was invited to do so by Minsk. According to Tinsgaard, the biased referendum campaign by the Belarusian government "contributed to a highly distorted campaign environment."
Tinsgaard said the authorities raided the campaign offices of opposition candidates, coerced many groups of voters to cast ballots in the 17 October polls, and conducted biased coverage of election-relates issues in the media. OSCE monitors determined that in 60 percent of polling stations they visited the vote count lacked transparency and was practically uncontrollable.
Šaltinis:
RFE/RL's Belarus Service
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Two powerful blasts have rocked the headquarters of President Nursultan Nazarbayev's ruling Otan party in Almaty's central district
more »
An Estonian pimp who turned illegal immigrants into sex workers at his Brighton massage parlor got the maximum 41-month federal prison sentence
more »
Pro-Yanukovych Region Sets Autonomy Referendum
more »
Zmitser Bandarenka: "It was Kuchma`s Administration Order to Seize Us"
more »
The Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has warned the country is on the verge of civil war
more »
Now from 150,000 to 200,000 people have gathered on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square)
more »
Ukraine's opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko has accused the authorities of rigging Sunday's fiercely fought presidential run-off
more »
A Polish woman who was kidnapped in Iraq more than three weeks ago has been released
more »
About 91,000 people from new eastern member states of the EU registered to work in the UK in the five months since the May expansion
more »
Maverick right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders said on Friday he would weed out radical Muslims by sealing the border to non-Western immigrants for five years and shutting down mosques advocating fundamentalism
more »