The candidate registration stage showed that Belarus’ House of Representatives elections are being conducted in accordance with the same old scenario and do not meet standards for democratic elections, Viktar Karnyayenka, a coordinator of the Campaign for Free Elections, told reporters in Minsk on Monday.

According to him, the most frequently given reason for a registration denial were flaws in sheets of ballot-access signatures. He suggested that parliamentary contenders should use the opportunity to appeal district election commissions’ decisions. “Very often, contenders simply had no time to find out why district election commissions invalidated some signatures,” Mr. Karnyayenka said. “Since I and Syarhey Kalyakin represent the United Civic Party and the ‘Spravedlivy Mir’ Belarusian Party of the Left on the central election commission as advisory members, we will try to help contenders who want to prove their point.”

He said that district election commissions could have been more tolerant to errors that parliamentary hopefuls had made while filling out their income and property statements. “We cannot say that there were no flaws in income and property statements. But we don’t know an instance where authorities let an applicant correct errors,” Mr. Karnyayenka said.

He predicted that the central election commission would uphold some complaints about registration denials, as in many cases district election commissions treated minor errors as violations of regulations.