The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Pre-signed results: Ballot workers in Belarus expose the forgeries - Walla! news

2020-09-01T19:15:09.676Z


An IP investigation came to those who witnessed the disruption of the proceedings in favor of dictator Lukashenko or who were under pressure to skew the votes in his favor. One employee was asked to sign a document before the polls closed, after another complained he was fired on the spot


  • news

  • World news

  • Europe

Pre-signed results: Ballot workers in Belarus expose the forgeries

An IP investigation came to those who witnessed the disruption of the proceedings in favor of dictator Lukashenko or who were under pressure to skew the votes in his favor.

One employee was asked to sign a document before the polls closed, after another complained he was fired on the spot

Tags

  • Belarus

  • Alexander Lukashenko

IP

Tuesday, 01 September 2020, 19:24 Updated: 22:11

  • Share on Facebook

  • Share on WhatsApp

  • Share on general

  • Share on general

  • Share on Twitter

  • Share on Email

0 comments

  • The historic visit is over: The Israeli delegation has left ...

  • The detention of Rabbi Netanel Shrikki, who is suspected of committing acts ...

  • The suspicion of rape in Eilat: The police will file an indictment against 11 ...

  • 2.4 million children open the school year, in cities ...

  • Reports in Syria: Israel attacks targets in the south of the country, ...

  • Gamzo: There is no need to insist on opening a school in red cities, ...

  • The song "All My Life" by Shlomi Saranga

  • Second day in the UAE: Talks on cooperation ...

  • Five years later: Preparations for the start of the trial on the attack ...

  • Weapons warehouses and rocket production facility - targets of corps attacks ...

  • Demonstrations in Los Angeles in protest of killing a black man by ...

  • Macron visiting Lebanon: meets with Hariri and the singer ...

In video: Demonstrations against the president in Minsk, Belarus (Photo: Reuters)

Even before the Belarusian presidential election ended on August 9, a poll worker in the capital, Minsk, said she had been asked to sign a document summarizing the results, leaving all votes blank.

Another pollster who indicated disruptions to the procedure during the count was fired on the spot.



In the small town of Vitebsk, a polling station official who signed a document with fake results in favor of President Alexander Lukashenko says he feels guilty about his betrayal of voters' trust.



In the three weeks since Lukashenko remained in power, claiming he won an overwhelming majority in the election, hundreds of thousands of people have come out to demonstrate against the results, which they claim have been falsified.

Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck.



The AP news agency interviewed polling station workers who said they had witnessed the forgeries or were under pressure to falsify the results in favor of Lukashenko.

In addition, other evidence posted online has revealed forgeries and other irregularities.

More on Walla!

NEWS

All his options are bad, but Putin can not give up on Belarus

To the full article

More on Walla!

NEWS

  • Protest in Belarus: Tens of thousands "celebrated" Lukashenko's "rat" birthday

  • Putin: There is no need to use Russian force in Belarus - at this stage

  • Belarusian dictator walks around with rifle and vest: "Protesters of rats"

  • Every day, about 50 Israelis have a heart attack: the medical service that will save your life

Were under pressure to falsify the results in his favor.

President Lukashenko votes in elections (Photo: AP)

For many in Belarus, where Lukashenko has ruled with an iron fist since 1994, his victory last month seemed unlikely.

He has been accused in the past of falsifying the election in his favor.



His main rival, former English teacher Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, attracted tens of thousands of supporters after she entered the race in place of her husband, Sergei, a popular blogger who was imprisoned before the election.

It has succeeded in uniting the divided opposition, taking advantage of the growing frustration of its weak economy and its arrogant disregard for the corona plague.



However, when the results were announced, the Central Election Commission said that Lukashenko received 4.6 million votes - 80% - while Tikhanovskaya received only 588 thousand, about 10% of the total electorate.



The opposition was prepared for this result in light of past experience.

This time, she trained people to be independent observers at the polls, encouraged polling workers to report irregularities and set up a website where voters uploaded photos documenting the ballots they had slated for comparison with the official vote count.



Activists who monitored the election wrote in the report that they had received complaints about violations, irregularities and incidents related to vote-rigging in at least 24% of the country's 5,767 polling stations.

According to the report, which was based on a count of less than a quarter of the polls, Tikhanovskaya received 471,000 votes in these areas alone.

Its supporters documented their votes.

Tykhanovskaya votes in Minsk (Photo: AP)

Valeria Artyhovsky, who worked at the polls in Minsk, said she still did not know what the official results were at her polls because they had never been published.



She said she was asked to sign the final minutes - a document summarizing the total votes that each ballot box must present at the end of the count - before the end of the vote, leaving them blank.

Artyhovskaya refused, and as the vote count began, she noticed that other workers had put the votes of other candidates in Lukashenko's part.



"I said I would not sign the protocol because it is a crime, it is a scam. 'Let me reshuffle the votes,' and they refused. I did not sign the protocol and left the ballot box," 30-year-old Artichovskaya told the Associated Press.

"My conscience is more precious."



Vadim Korzikov, who worked at another polling station in Minsk, told the AP that he did not even get to the part of the signing - a senior employee fired him after he warned of violations of election purity during the count.

The 20-year-old student said his colleagues later told him that the number of votes Tikhanovskaya received at the ballot box was five times higher than that of Lukashenko.



"It's a mockery of justice, there is no other name for it," he said in a telephone interview today.

"We were all very depressed"

Andrei Gnidenko, who worked at a polling station in the small town of Vitebsk in the northeast of the country, said he succumbed to pressure and signed a document with fake results.



According to the final protocol from the ballot box, a picture of which was forwarded by Gnidenko to the AP, Tikhanovskaya received a total of 156 votes, while Lukashenko received 488. However, he said he and other staff counted more than 250 votes for the leading opposition candidate.



After it was time to sign the protocol during the night, everyone was exhausted, and a crowd of residents gathered outside the polls demanding to know the results.

Gnidenko felt sorry for everyone and decided to end it.

Now, he regrets that decision.



"In the days that followed, we were all very depressed," said 29-year-old Gnidenko.

"I decided that because I betrayed the citizens of Belarus, because I participated in the forgeries and signed them, it is my duty to tell about it."



In an audio recording of another polling station in the city, published on YouTube, a senior official was heard telling polling station workers to falsify the results.

He suggested switching between the numbers of Lukashenko and Tikhanovskaya.



"I'm willing to agree that a lot of people voted for Tykhanovskaya, but we have other goals and other issues that need to be resolved," he is heard saying.

After deliberation, the polling station workers exchanged the results.



Some of the workers confirmed to the Belarusian media that the recording, which received more than 450,000 views on YouTube, was reliable.

"It is a mockery of justice, there is no other name for it."

Voting at Minsk polls last month (Photo: AP)

Alexander Khomich, a spokesman for the "decent people" activist group that oversaw the election, said Tikhanovskaya received a much larger number of votes than the official one, while Lukashenko received a much smaller number.



"In light of the way the election was falsified, I pledge that no one - not us, not the Central Election Commission - knows the true results of the election," he told the Associated Press.



The Election Commission refused the candidates' demands for a recount, and Lukashenko was furious at the demands for new elections.

In a response to the IP, the conference once again rejected allegations of widespread counterfeiting, saying the complaints received from observers and voters were mainly about technical matters.



However, the four other candidates running against Lukashenko do not recognize the election results, as do the United States and the European Union.

EU ministers are formulating sanctions against senior Belarusian officials who have been involved in post-election violence and violence against protesters.

"People will not forgive what happened"

Last week Belarus's Supreme Court refused to order a re-election, saying it could not rule on it after the Election Commission approved the results.



Maxim Zanak, a lawyer and member of the Coordination Council, a body set up by the opposition after the election to negotiate the transfer of power to the Lukashenko regime, said the court did not even examine the 26 folders full of evidence submitted by Tihanovskaya's supporters.



"They did not investigate the evidence, they did not check anything, they did not call witnesses. They just said it was not possible," he told the Associated Press.



Despite this, opposition activists believe the legal battle is far from over.

He said independent voters and observers are filing separate complaints and demanding that law enforcement agencies investigate the forgeries at their polling stations.



"In each of the polls where voters know they voted one way and the results were different, they will continue to fight for their votes. They go to the police. They want to open a criminal investigation," he said.



Artihovskaya, who works at the polling station in Minsk, did just that last week.

She filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General's Office about what she saw.



"We know people will not forget this. People will not forgive what happened," Zanak said.

  • Share on Facebook

  • Share on WhatsApp

  • Share on general

  • Share on general

  • Share on Twitter

  • Share on Email

0 comments

Source: walla

All news articles on 2020-09-01

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.