The head of the Central Election Commission Lidziya Yarmoshyna stated this in her answer to the Mahiliou human rights defender Aliaksei Kolchyn, registered as an observer at constituency election commission #85.

Mr. Kolchyn wanted to monitor the verification of the signatures in support of the nomination of candidates, and filed an appropriate application. However, the constituency election commission gave him a formal answer. In addition, the commission violated the legislation by giving the answer in the Russian language instead of the language of the application, Belarusian. As a result, Aliaksei Kolchyn applied to the Central Election Commission.

In her answer Lidziya Yarmoshyna wrote that the monitoring of the verification of signatures “cannot be provided as far as it is not grounded on the law”.

Moreover, she wrote that election commissions don't have the status of organizations and work on a voluntary basis, that's why they cannot violate the Law “On applications of citizens and juridical bodies”, which means they don't have to give answers in the language of the received applications.

Human rights defender Barys Bukhel says that if one follows Yarmoshyna's logic, election commissions can ignore the legislation at all. “One cannot say that the election commissions work on 100% voluntary basis, as their budgets include financing for the payment of wages to the people who are freed from their main work during the election period,” commented the human rights activist.

“Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”