Yarmoshyna: I never regret anything

A presidential candidate Ryhor Kastusyou was the only person to have lodged a complaint about the election results to the Central Election Commission. He demanded to nullify the election results and to appoint a new election. The politician enclosed a pile of documents containing observers’ reports about violations during the early and the main voting on December 19. However, the head of the legal organization department of the CEC Nadzeya Kisyalyova claimed that she could not pay attention to the listed facts.

Nadzeya Kisyalyova: “We cannot refute that there were some procedural violations. However, they could not affect the election results and cannot prove the fact that the republican election results should be nullified”.

The results of “the check-up” made Ryhor Kastusyou’s representative Ales Lahvinets indignant.

Ales Lahvinets: “The Central Election Commissions should not have organized its meeting before the release of the presidential candidates. Ryhor Kastusyou loathed coming here today to watch you circus show. We have no real elections, our commissions do not count votes anywhere – look at the OSCE report”.

Andrei Sannikau’s representative Yury Hadyka attracted the attention of CEC members to the fact that a presidential candidate Alyaksandr Lukashenka had insulted his opponents many times during the election campaign and accused them of receiving Russian money without any proof. Hadyka says that it was a violation of the Election Code. According to him, it is a reason to satisfy Kastusyou’s appeal and to nullify the election results.

Yury Hadyka and Kanstantsin Lukashou, a CEC member with an advisory vote, suggested that the Central Election Commission should ask the police to release the presidential candidates from the KGB detention centre. The suggestion made the CEC chairperson Lidziya Yarmoshyna indignant.

Lidziya Yarmoshyna: “It could be showy to turn the Central Commission into a peanut politician institution making appeals and interfering in the work of the police. But it is not our job”.

She also put a refusal to satisfy Ryhor Kastusyou’s appeal to the vote. And urged not to consider Hadyka and Lukashou’s suggestion that the CEC should address the police. Commission members supported the chairperson unanimously.

Two more complaints from ordinary observers had been sent to the CEC. They demanded to re-count the votes in their election centres referring to noticed violations. The appeals were also declined unanimously.

The CEC secretary Mikakai Lazavik made the final statement and summed it up: there had been no major violations during the election, the OSCE had admitted that the election was “good” or “very good” in the majority of the election centres and suggested announcing Alyaksandr Lukashenka to be the official winner.

 All CEC members supported the idea unanimously and did not even consider Yury Hadyka’s initiative.

Journalists asked Lidziya Yarmoshyna whether she was disappointed that her dream had not come true and that the OSCE had not recognized the election results despite Lazavik’s forecast.

Lidziya Yarmoshyna: “You know, I never regret anything. Even if dreams do not come true”.

Answering the question whether she was going to retire, she noted ambiguously after the discussion of the election results: “You must know the joke: “I am a captive bird – I will fly away when they let me to”.