Belsat.eu received a report of one of the independent observers in Minsk. Zmicier Sauka describes how the elections at his station were rigged.
We are publishing the report of the observer without changes:
“Dear friends and colleagues,
For 6 days, I was an observer at the elections – at the station 58 of the Soviet rayon of Minsk (School 28). Here is the nature of the violations that I recorded:
1. The observers were not really allowed to see the vote count. Observers were 15: 13 of them were pseudo-observers from the Belarusian Republican Youth Union and similar organizations (almost all of them were the employees of the same school).
2. Of the real observers was me with a colleague. Everyone had to stay 15 m from the vote count tables, in the end of the corridor type room. In the second end of the room were count tables surrounded with the figures of the commission members.
I had a conflict with the chair of the commission – I was almost removed from the station by the police. Eventually, I happened to be 3m away from the desk, but it gave me almost no chance to see anything.
2. During the main voting day, me and a colleague, we counted 710 people drop ballots in. In the final minutes of the commission, there were 1,046 persons who participated in the elections on the main polling day. The difference is 336 pseudovotes.
3. In the final minutes of the commission the figure is 96 people who voted for Tatsiana Karatkevich. However, during the count, the number 96 for Karatkevich was called as the final one on the main day of vote. At the counting of votes after the early voting, the number of people voting for Karatkevich was officially 36. Thus, the Commission stole from Karatkevich at least thirty-six votes.
CONCLUSIONS:
1. Fearing that the elections in the station may not take place because of the low turnout, the Commission, apparently, added a number of pseudovoices that would ensure a situation in which the elections would be considered valid irrespective of the actual turnout.
2. For such falsification efforts of one person are enough.
3. I place the responsibility for the falsification on the commission chair Ala Pantsyalei – head teacher of secondary school 28 in Minsk.
A citizen of Belarus Zmicier Sauka
PS I am extremely hurt, uncomfortable, ashamed of the members of the commission who considered it possible to commit this offense.”
