How the presidential elections were rigged in Belarus: members of district commissions testify

A member of the commission said, let’s say, that before the voting ended, he was asked to sign a document that had already printed the overall results. The lines of votes cast for a particular candidate were left blank.

Another representative of the electoral commission, who spoke out loud about irregularities in the counting of votes, was immediately fired.

And in Vitebsk, after a long hesitation, the official signed a document with false data, which supposedly testified to the victory of A. Lukashenko. Later he was overwhelmed with guilt: the man realized that he was betraying the electorate.

Three weeks have passed since Election Day and the protests of hundreds of thousands of people, put down by brutal repression, have not stopped. Students and schoolchildren also took to the streets on September 1.

Some experts say there will soon be an even bigger economic crisis and, with it, a new wave of demonstrations. On the other hand, the strikes have subsided: the threats seem to have affected workers who are barely making ends meet.

Nobody believes in official figures

The AP spoke to a group of poll commission members in various constituencies, all of whom said they saw fraud. It is true that if some refused to participate in the mass deception, others admitted to having succumbed to the pressure.

It is really clear that many Belarusians, who have been controlled by Lukashenko with an iron fist since 1994, were not entirely convinced by the news of his supposedly crushing victory on August 9.

On the contrary, it is believed that her main opponent, Sviatlana Cichanouskaya, who took the elections in place of her imprisoned husband, who spoke out boldly about Belarus’ fragile economy and the difficult perception of the Lukashenko regime about the spread of COVID-19 , is said to have received the most votes.

In other words, hardly anyone believes the Central Election Commission report that 4.6 million people voted for Lukashenko. voters (80%), and for S.Cichanouskaja – only 588 thousand. people (10%).

It is true that the opposition was ready: it is suspected that the results of absolutely all the elections of the last quarter of a century had been falsified by instructions of the Lukashenko regime.

This time, the activists trained an entire army of independent observers. They also asked members of the electoral commissions to report irregularities and created a website where citizens could leave photos of their ballots, in order to informally compile a real record of votes.

There is already a report stating that complaints about irregularities, strange discrepancies and other incidents of at least 24% were received after the vote. electoral districts. There are a total of 5767 of these in Belarus.

As already mentioned, S.Cichanouskaja officially collected only 588 thousand. votes. But activists say it attracted more than 471,000 in that quarter alone. voters.

Consciousness is broken

Valerija Artichovskaja AP, who worked at the polling station, said she still does not know the official voting results in her constituency, which had never been announced like this.

The woman was asked to sign the final act, a document that summarizes the results of the vote in a particular constituency, although the vote itself was not yet over. The lines were still empty.

V. Artichovskaja refused to sign, and already after counting the votes, he noticed that other members of the electoral commission cast ballots in support of other candidates for lukašenkinė battery.

“I said that I would not sign the protocol because it would be a crime, it was a hoax. I asked to be allowed to recount the votes, but I did not. I did not sign the protocol and I left the neighborhood. My conscience is more important to me, ”said the Belarusian.

Vadim Korzykov, who worked in another constituency in Minsk, said in turn that he had not reached the stage of signing the protocol. As soon as the man spoke of the rapes, a senior official fired him.

A.Gnidenka: “I feel sorry for everyone and decided to close the case. The following days we were all immersed in a very deep depression. Since I betrayed the people of Belarus, I decided to tell them everything in good faith. “

Vadim, a 20-year-old student, claimed that his colleagues later revealed to him that five times more people voted for Chichanouskaya in the constituency than for Lukashenko: “It is a mockery of justice, I cannot find other words.”

Andrejus Gnidenka worked in the Vitebsk region and admitted that he had given in to pressure by signing the documents. The official results were recorded as follows: 488 votes for A. Lukashenko, 156 for S. Cichanouskaya.

But Gnidenka says that more than 100 voters actually voted for the opposition candidate. It was said that by the time it came to sign the minutes late at night, everyone was already tired and there was a crowd outside; people demanded to tell them the results.

“I feel sorry for everyone and I decided to close the case. The following days we were all immersed in a very deep depression. Since I betrayed the people of Belarus, I decided to tell everything honestly, ”said A. Gnidenka.

An audio recording of another incident in Vitebsk appeared on the Internet. It is heard that the members of the electoral commission receive instructions from their boss to falsify the votes in favor of A. Lukashenko; it is alleged that you cannot simply exchange numbers.

“I am willing to accept that many people have voted for Cichanouskaya. But our objectives are different, there are other problems that we have to solve,” the official addressed the subordinates, and the authenticity of these words was later confirmed to the media by the members of the commission.

Actual results will remain unclear

Aliaksandr Khomyich, a spokesperson for the Honest People’s Observer Organization, says that Cihanouskaya got more votes than Lukashenko, but adds: “Given the way the elections were rigged, I can guarantee that no one, not us or the Central Election Commission, knows the actual results. “

The Central Election Commission itself refuses to count the votes, which, of course, Lukashenko does not want, and the Supreme Court of Belarus will not annul the results of the elections. The Commission announced last week that the AP had rejected the fraud allegations; Understandably, many of the complaints referred to procedural irregularities.

According to a member of the opposition Coordination Council, lawyer Maxim Znak, the Supreme Court did not even offer to look at 26 thick notebooks with evidence of electoral fraud.

The opposition disagrees, as does the United States and the European Union, who said the elections were neither free nor fair. Although the process will take time, the Community is preparing a package of sanctions against senior Belarusian officials for electoral fraud and repression.

According to a member of the opposition Coordination Council, lawyer Maxim Znak, the Supreme Court did not even offer to look at 26 thick notebooks with evidence of electoral fraud.

“They did not analyze these data, they did not verify anything, they did not call to testify. They simply stated that this was not possible, “Znak said.

True, he says the fight continues: both voters and independent observers file individual complaints and demand investigations in individual constituencies: “People are fighting for their votes. They go to the military, they demand the opening of criminal investigations. “

Such a complaint has already been filed by V. Artichovskaja, who refused to vote: “We know that the people will not forget it. People won’t forget what happened. “