Yarmoshyna: Election Code may be changed only after elections

The CEC expert work group has made suggestions about the improvement of the election process. The group was created in February 2016 in order to analyze the report made by the OSCE/ODIHR and prepare suggestions and recommendations for the President. The last meeting was held on March 15. The group announced that it was ‘inadvisable to change the Election Code at present’.

The parliamentary elections will be appointed within the next few months and the Venice Commission does not recommend changing the election legislation when there is less than a year left before elections, sputnik.by quotes the work group. However, the OSCE had been hoping to see changes in the Belarusian Election Code before the parliamentary elections, Euroradio reported.

The suggestion made by the group are ‘preliminary and only apply to changes that may be made before the next elections’, CEC chairperson Lidziya Yarmoshyna noted. “We will go back to considering the suggestions and think about the possible changes to the Election Code after the parliamentary elections,” Yarmoshyna said.

It is not clear when Lidziya Yarmoshyna will report the suggestions made by the expert group to Alyaksandr Lukashenka.