Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MINSK, 28 September (BelTA) – Belarus plans to invite a wide range of organizations to monitor the 2025 presidential election, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Maksim Ryzhenkov told journalists in New York, BelTA has learned.
“We are set to use a broad range of international observation tools through all specialized organizations that are ready to engage in constructive and objective election observation,” Maksim Ryzhenkov said.
Thus, Belarus plans to invite election observation missions from the CIS, the SCO, other organizations and a number of countries.
Speaking about the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the foreign minister noted that this structure has more than 50 member states and must ensure compliance with accepted standards in various areas in all its members states. However, for some reason, the OSCE/ODIHR is hyper-focused on elections only in post-Soviet countries.
“They used to deploy missions to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Yugoslavia - they don't do it there anymore. In other words, they got focused only on us. And you know, when observers arrive, they already have a certain bias, they were told prior to the visit what to look at and how. And when the organization seeks to bolster pre-determined narratives, why do we need such monitoring?” the foreign minister noted.
Maksim Ryzhenkov recalled the recent parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, when the OSCE/ODIHR prepared their report before the elections were over. The findings in the document were pre-determined.
“The most interesting thing is that the OSCE/ODIHR itself talks a lot about standards, but there is no binding document that all countries should comply with. This pertains to many things. Take voting by mail - America does this, but we cannot do it because it would be frowned upon. Thus, when there are no common standards, when certain standards are invented and some experts say that 'these standards apply only to you', when everything is written in advance, when certain 'foreign agents' from among our citizens or citizens of other countries who are in Belarus are used to serve this purpose, why do we need such observers? Their presence in Belarus will not help us improve the electoral legislation; they will not learn our best practices; they will just come to lecture us about some rules... Well, why would we need this?” the foreign minister said.
“Of course, we will think about it, we still have time. But believe me, there will be no meaningful benefits from this,” added Maksim Ryzhenkov.
Follow us on:
