The presence of two groups, candidates and voters, is obligatory when carrying out any elections. But an election campaign has one more indispensable side, the observers. These are people authorised to observe the activity of the election commission, they supervise the counting of votes, check the validity of the summation of results and other issues. The Secretary of the Central Election Commission, Nikolai Lozovik, told us how the forthcoming Presidential elections, set for October 11th, will look for observers.
“Our purpose is the following. We have introduced an amendment to the law, to allow observers to monitor the counting of votes, thus ensuring transparency in our election process. They are not simply looking from afar, but watching closely to see how the voting papers are counted. It is a requirement of the law. Therefore, if they are not allowed to do their job properly, it means that the commission will be breaking that law. And it will be necessary to report it,” notes Mr. Lozovik.
At the same time, relying on the experience of recent years, the Secretary of the Central Election Commission noticed that even with the absence of barriers, observers do not always give objective assessments in their final conclusions, “At times observers say that they have no comments concerning the election process, but when the final conclusion is prepared, some officials turn their minor points into significant issues.”
Mr. Lozovik assumes that in the forthcoming Presidential elections, there will be a large number of international observers, in particular, there will be a large group of ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) from the OSCE officials present. The Secretary of the Central Election Commission also noted that local observers will be working as usual, comprising a whole army of helpers in the region of 30-40 thousand people.
By Vyacheslav Ivanov
