Communist party election observers come under fire

The Central Committee of the Belarusian Party of Communists (BPC), at its meeting on October 19, criticized the party’s members who had been granted seats on election commissions in September’s parliamentary vote for not doing enough to record evidence of vote fraud, BelaPAN reported.

“The work of multiple observers sent by the party to polling stations deserves the same assessment,” the BPC leadership said in its statement.

The Central Committee described the party’s decision to participate in the elections as correct, noting that it had used the campaign to promote the opposition’s platform among the public.

The leadership played up the organization of campaigns by the party’s candidates. “There is no doubt that with a fair vote count, without the massive vote fraud that the ruling regime opted for yet another time a number of BPC members would have won seats on the House of Representatives,” the statement said.

The BPC Central Committee said that a boycott of the elections by the opposition would have been “harmful” and made it impossible to record evidence of abuse of election regulations by authorities.
BelaPAN