Polling stations with transparent boxes get 87% pro Lukashenka votes

At a meeting of the Central Election Commission, Lidziya Yarmoshyna persistently asked the heads of regional election commissions to set as many transparent boxes as possible, "because the opposition demands it."

In the Chachersk region, during the latest presidential election, all the boxes were transparent: both for early voting and for the main day.

"A small part of the funds for the purchase of the boxes was allocated by enterprises and organizations of the region, and the main part was the means set out for holding the election campaign and given to the election commissions," told Euroradio the Acting Department Head of Organizational and Personnel Work of the Chachersk District Executive Committee, Vadzim Plutkevich.

Why not have independent observers set up monitoring in this area with a transparent box and compare the results with the general figures?

A human rights activist from Homiel, Leanid Sudalenka, engaged in independent election observation, is surprised by the information about the transparent ballot boxes and said that there were definitely no imdependent observers in the Chachersk rayon.

"I do not know a single person who was engaged in the social and political activities in the Chachersk rayon. It is all very depressing there in this respect," said Sudalenka.

The election results in the area with transparent boxes are not very good for the opposition candidates. Lukashenka received there 83 percent of the vote. And the only opposition candidate, Ryhor Kastusiou, crossed the two-percent barrier and gained 2.82 percent of the vote. Mr Sannikau received 29 votes, and Nyaklyayeu received only 19 votes out of nearly 11,000 voters participating in the election.

Turnout in the Chachersk rayon

Voting in the Chachersk rayon

In the presidential elections of 2010, the Stolin rayon also voted using the transparent boxes. First boxes of this kind were there during the elections to the House of Representatives. They were bought at the expense of the regional budget as an experiment. Later, more of theose were purchased for the local elections by state companies. During the presidential election, there were already 74 boxes: one for each site.

Local businessman prooduced the boxes, each costing nearly $100.

But there was no independent election monitoring in the Stolin rayon either. Chairman of the Brest regional branch of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada) Ihar Maslouski could not recall anyone observing the election. But he said that the results did not depend on this.

"After all, transparent ballot boxes do not affect the situation. There were no differences in the results between areas with transparent and regular boxes. Each member of the Commission counted their stack of papers, wrote the result on the notes handed chairman of the commission. She wrote a protocol in a separate room, everyone signed it. Separately, each ballot paper was not shown. In this situation, even a single member of the Commission does not know the overall results for the area."

The election results are not very different from the general figures here either. Quite the contrary - Lukashenka was supported by 87.78%.

Voting in Stolin rayon

Turnout in the Stolin rayon (52,358 registered voters, 52,356 voters took part. Thus, two people took ballot papers with them).

Photo: photo.bymedia.net