Political organizations actively engage in the election campaign

All election participants have nominated their representatives to electoral commissions at regional, city and district levels. Political organisations appear to be much better mobilized for the ongoing election campaign as compared with 2016.

On August 28^th, 2019 the CEC, at its meeting, enabled the use of Internet banking to make transfers to candidates’ funds and sign language translation of candidates’ TV appeals. The size of transfers and the timing and the number of enabled appeals has remained unchanged.

Last week, the OSCE / ODIHR needs assessment mission was in Minsk and held meetings with all participants in the elections.

On August 30^th, 2019, the nomination of the party and public associations’ representatives to regional, city and district commissions completed. All participants in the elections, democratic and pro-government parties, public and state-public associations (the Belarusian Republican Youth Union and Belaya Rus) have nominated their representatives, for example, For Freedom movement – 117 (7 territorial and 110 districts), the Belarusian Popular Front – 35, Tell The Truth – 36. Next week, the CEC will announce how many representatives have become commission members.

Two organizations, Tell The Truth and the Brest branch of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, have already started campaigning in social media; they have presented their potential candidates and announced a recruitment process for members of initiative groups and teams to collect signatures. The BSDH party has launched a mobile app for the parliamentary campaign. For Freedom movement has decided to nominate candidates at a conference (the Constitution enables NGOs and parties to nominate their candidates, while the Electoral Code says nothing about NGOs), but, simultaneously, will collect signatures and use friendly organisations to benefit from the party nomination. The nomination at a conference is most likely to fail, however, such an attempt creates an additional argument for amending the Electoral Code.