30 observers get expelled from polling stations in Orša
October 6 they were expelled on the first day of early voting, though there have been no problems with registration and visiting polling stations until that day.
This act was justified by the weird understanding of the protocols of observer nomination by the chairmen of commissions. RFE/RL was told by the chairman of Viciebsk regional party branch Mikalai Selivashka. “In all protocols on nomination as observers it was written that a person is sent to monitor “the elections of the president of Belarus on October 11, 2015” – that’s the full official name of the current “elections.”
It is written in such a form on the website of the Central Elections Committee as well. However, today the people have been told that they have a right to monitor the elections on one day only, October 11. They said that you have written so yourselves in the document. But observers have a right to monitor elections for the duration of the elections, if it had not been indicated in the protocol separately, that the person had been sent for one or for six days. There have been no clarifications in our protocols. We simply named the event the way it is called by the Central Elections Commission,” Mikalai Selivashka said.
He claims that he had not encountered such occasions before, though he has been a member of the regional elections commission many times, and solved all kinds of controversial issues in this capacity. Expelling observers does not look like thoughtlessness, but like some planned measures, believes the leader of the regional party organisation.