Kyrgyzstan: The presidential elections disappointed OSCE observers
Today, at the press-conference in Bishkek the representatives of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for monitoring the presidential elections announced that the intermediary report, where they give negative estimate of presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan.
The Head of ODIHR Radmila Shekerinska shared she was disappointed with the organization of elections. "Unfortunately, the presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan have not demonstrated the progress and do not meet OSCE requirements", she said.
According to her, current President Kurmanbek Bakiev "had unfair advantage with the use of administrative resources and biased coverage of election campaign in mass media".
"We were glad to see the political pluralism and active involvement of civil society. Nonetheless, this is all questionable due to unfair game rules when there was no difference between the ruling party and government", the Senator Consilio di Nino, special coordinator of OSCE short-term observers and Head of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation, informed.
OSCE observers underlined the electorate could not have independent opinion about all candidates since it was receiving various information. OSCE representatives also highlighted the cases of "creating obstacles for opposition election campaign as well as pressure and threat, targeted at opposition members".
"These disadvantages created the atmosphere of distrust and undermined the public confidence in democratic elections", Mr. di Nino noted. According to him, the Election Day "was complicated by many problems and violations, including faked ballots, mistakes in the voters list and multiple voting by single person". "I would like to underline that we were disappointed by the presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan", he concluded.
The mission of short term and long term observers from OSCE in the amount of 280 people were in Kyrgyzstan for about two months prior to the Election Day and will stay in Kyrgyzstan for another month. In few weeks OSCE mission is going to publish final report.
The latest data reports that current President Kurmanbek Bakiev has 86.33 percent of votes in 61 percent of ballots. Almazbek Atamabaev was supported by 7.39 percent of voters.
The mission of observers from Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has not reported big violations of rules at the presidential Election Day in Kyrgyzstan. This was announced by Deputy Secretary General of SCO Sherali Djononov in the interview to journalists.
The monitoring of election was conducted in the period of July 18-23, 2009. "We were able to learn the election campaign of the presidential candidates and have conversation with some of them. On the Election Day we visited 39 polling stations. It has to be noted that we have witnessed appropriate conditions for free voting", 24.kg news agency cites Mr. Djononov.
SCO mission observers did not note serious violations of election code. "We received few complaints about violations that were not confirmed. Moreover, we have been in touch with the observers of other missions. They also mentioned there were no serious violations while the elections were transparent", they added.
It is worth mentioning that the opposition forces reported multiple violation of election code. In the opinion of Kyrgyz human rights activists, these were the worse presidential elections in the history of Kyrgyzstan. Major violations include: mass input of ballots in support of one candidate, roundabout voting, uncontrolled distribution of absentee ballot and suspiciously great number of citizens, who voted early.
