Republic

Ensuring electoral sovereignty is the number one task. This point of view was expressed by Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Belarus Igor Karpenko on September 19 following a meeting between President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and heads of electoral authorities of the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

As the Belarusian head of state noted during the meeting, electoral campaigns have long ceased to be a technical procedure and have turned into a battlefield today.

In this regard, Igor Karpenko stressed that the main thing is to prevent a real battlefield. "It should be a competition of political programs and candidates, equal access of citizens to all necessary information and creation of optimal conditions so that they can freely express their will. These are probably the main approaches that are determined at the elections."

At the same time, the chairman of the Central Election Commission of Belarus stated that in the West, for example, liberal parties go to the polls with social slogans that do not correspond to their political programs.

"This is a kind of fooling of voters," Igor Karpenko believes. "Today it is difficult to understand at all the ideological platforms of some political parties, which change for each election — and not only by name, but also by some political formulations and ideological aspects."

The CEC chairman believes that the elections should be understandable for voters: "If you adhere to a certain political, ideological course, then tell me honestly what will happen."

"There should be a responsibility of politicians to the voters, because today we observe: they go to the polls with only slogans, then they sit in a chair and start turning the country upside down — we observe this everywhere. In this regard, ensuring electoral sovereignty is the number one task. It is no coincidence that we did not just introduce this concept. We have introduced a new constitutional body, the All—Belarusian People's Assembly, as a guarantor of maintaining stability in the country, continuity of the political course and determining strategic directions for the development of the state and society."

BELTA