HEAD OF EX-SOVIET STATES’ OBSERVER MISSION CALLS BELARUSIAN ELECTIONS OPEN, TRANSPARENT
Jim Heintz

AP Worldstream
Mar 20, 2006

The head of the observer mission of a grouping of former Soviet states
on Monday called the disputed Belarusian presidential election open
and transparent.

The assessment by Vladimir Rushailo, head of the Commonwealth of
Independent States’ mission, is likely to contrast sharply with an
assessment to be issued later Monday by the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe’s mission.

Rushailo, in a droning statement that lasted more than a half-hour,
said the CIS mission’s 467 observers concluded that, despite some
technical violations, the Sunday elections took place within the
requirements of Belarusian law.

The OSCE, by contrast, assesses elections in terms of whether they
meet international standards for free and fair democratic elections.

The assessments by the OSCE and CIS missions on elections in
post-Soviet states frequently differ radically.

Rushailo is a former interior minister of Russia. The Kremlin is
closely allied with Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander
Lukashenko, whom official results show winning a third term in
a landslide.

Opposition supporters held a rally of thousands on Sunday night to
protest the results, and have called for another protest on Monday
evening.

The CIS observers “declare the elections free, open and transparent,”
Rushailo said. He later denounced Western countries’ persistent
criticism of Belarus for intimidating and restricting the opposition
ahead of the election.

“Prejudiced statements, harsh announcements, as well warnings from
several countries on the eve of the elections about their readiness
to take various restrictive measures of a political and economic
character against the Republic of Belarus: the CIS observers see
these as attempts to influence the course of the election process in
its final stage,” Rushailo said.

The mission included observers from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Notably
absent were observers from Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, all of which
are CIS members that recently have distanced themselves from Moscow
to take a more West-leaning course.