Andrei Bastunets Takes Part in Media Supervisory Council

This is the first time that Andrei Bas­tunets has been includ­ed into the Coun­cil, which bears advi­so­ry func­tions and com­ple­ments the work of the Cen­tral Elec­toral Com­mis­sion.

The Coun­cil con­sid­ered the com­plaint lodged by a can­di­date Siarhei Trafim­chyk in con­stituen­cy No60, Shchuchyn, against sev­er­al local state mass media.

Accord­ing to the com­plaint, news­pa­pers Zara na Niomanam, Hrodzen­skaya Prau­da and Dzian­nit­sa pub­lished arti­cles about the chair­per­son of the region­al orga­ni­za­tion of Valery Sauko, the Belaru­sian Trade Union of state orga­ni­za­tions and oth­ers. The arti­cles had infor­ma­tion about pick­ets, held to col­lect bal­lot-access sig­na­tures for Valery Sauko. Also, there were two inter­views with him as the chair of the trade union; the inter­views relat­ed to 60^th anniver­sary of the trade union.

Siarhei Trafim­chyk asked to give assess­ment of the arti­cles and to issue rec­om­men­da­tions to edi­tors of the media remind­ing that they have to observe the rule of equal oppor­tu­ni­ties for all can­di­dates.

Hav­ing dis­cussed the issue, the Coun­cil con­clud­ed that:

- The elec­toral law was not vio­lat­ed here as the Elec­toral Code reg­u­lates such sit­u­a­tions only in rela­tion to reg­is­tered can­di­dates, where­as the arti­cles were pub­lished in the process of nom­i­na­tion of Valery Sauko;

- Nev­er­the­less, a num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions were inap­pro­pri­ate;

- The deci­sion with rec­om­men­da­tions will be sent to the edi­to­r­i­al offices of the men­tioned news­pa­pers.

Andrei Bas­tunets was informed that the Coun­cil had not yet received any oth­er com­plaints.

Andrei Bas­tunets found out that the CEC fol­lowed the mon­i­tor­ing of BAJ over the elec­toral cam­paign in the media. The chair­per­son of BAJ agreed with Lidziya Yarmoshy­na, head of CEC, that BAJ would for­ward its opin­ions regard­ing the cov­er­age of elec­tions in the media.

We remind that two mon­i­tor­ing reports pre­pared by the Mon­i­tor­ing group of BAJ are avail­able HERE (July 4 — 24) and HERE (July 25 – August 14).