The Central Election Commission has failed to publish the full texts of its decisions, says Mahiliou human rights defender Barys Bukhel in an open letter sent to the CEC chair Lidzia Yarmoshyna.

The human rights defender stresses that concealment of decrees issued by the Central Election Commission violates Art. 34 of the Belarusian Constitution, as well as Par. 1 and 2 Art. 13 and Art. 32 of the Electoral Code.

“The analysis of the CEC’s official web-site (http://rec.gov.by) shows that in its daily activities the Commission has repeatedly violated the above-mentioned legal provisions by systemic and illegal secret decision-taking,” says Barys Bukhel.

In particular, the human rights defender argues that only 20 out of 38 decrees adopted by the CEC as of July 13, 2012 have been published on its web-site. Moreover, the site features the full texts of only 16 decisions.

Apart from that, Barys Bukhel claims that the Belarusian electoral legislation has a number of absurd provisions. In particular, he urges the CEC chair to explain why public associations cannot delegate their representatives to constituency election commissions in parliamentary elections, while they can do so in local and presidential elections.

“I believe this was done in order to decrease the number of representatives of opposition political parties and public associations and to prevent them from getting to constituency commissions,” says the human rights defender.