.
US government spent $1,743,898 interfering in Belarus politics in 2019 via US regime change group, so-called National Endowment for Democracy, or NED. Why does Belarus allow a foreign military power to incite discord between the people of Belarus and their government?…”Virtually every “international” organization is under the thumb of the US either directly, or via funding, or via indirect influence, to the point where there is literally *no* such thing as “international order” any more (if there ever was.)” commenter
9/13/20, “Declaring Elections Illegitimate–By Rejecting To Send Observers," Moon of Alabama
“International election observer missions are supposed to watch that the individual legal voting rules of a country are followed. They are expected to report any irregularities they detect. Unfortunately there are now attempts to pervert their purpose. The active withholding of observer missions is now used to delegitimize elections even when those are fair and follow all the relevant rules. Recent examples are the presidential election in Belarus and the upcoming congressional election in Venezuela.
Back in June we detected a planned color revolution in Belarus by connecting various media reports that hyped the weak opposition forces.
One additional indication that the election in Belarus would be used for nefarious purposes was the willful absence of OSCE election monitors.
Belarus had, as usual, expected the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to send election observers for the August 9 election. But the OSCE preemptively announced that it would not do so because an invitation was allegedly too late:
“The lack of a timely invitation more than two months after the announcement of the election has prevented ODIHR from observing key aspects of the electoral process,” ODIHR Director Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir said. “These include areas we have noted in recent observation reports as requiring improvement in Belarus, such as the formation of election commissions and registration of candidates. It is clear from the outcomes of these processes that the authorities have not taken any steps to improve their inclusiveness.”
The government of Belarus was surprised by the one-sided step:
“Indeed, to be honest, ODIHR’s decision was disappointing and unexpected. We really hope that this decision will be revised. After all, today, a day after the registration of presidential candidates, in line with earlier public statements, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent invitations to the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. These are our traditional partners in election observation. We remain strongly committed to our promises and obligations, including within the framework of the OSCE,” Anatoly Glaz said. He emphasized that Belarus has never held elections without observation. “This time we were also determined to invite OSCE/ODIHR observers after the candidate registration. It was announced publicly on numerous occasions, we informed our western partners, senior officials of the Office and personally Ingibjorg Gisladottir about it. We are absolutely transparent in this context and this can be double-checked,” the spokesman said.
The willful absence of OSCE election observers later allowed ‘western’ media and politicians to claim that the election, which Belarus’ President Lukashenko won, had been unfair.
In an August 18 interview Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out that the OSCE argument was wrong:
“There are international legal frameworks that must serve as guidance when it comes to determining one’s attitude towards events in a specific country. […] [T]he Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). One of its responsibilities is to monitor national elections in the OSCE member states. This responsibility is part of the obligations signed by all members of this highly respected organisation, without exception. We are being told that the violations during the election campaign were obvious and documented by voluntary observers, on social media, on camera, etc. The ODIHR itself, which was supposed to monitor the elections, claims that its representatives did not go to Belarus because the invitation was sent too late. This is not true, to put it mildly, because, like any other OSCE member state, Belarus’s only commitment is “to invite international observers to national elections.”
There is no timeline for inviting OSCE election observers. The OSCE should have prepared for the mission before the official invitation took place.
The scheme to not send election observers when an unwanted candidate is likely to win now sees a repeat with regards to Venezuela.
On September 2 the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro invited the European Union to send election monitors to watch over the congressional election that will take place on December 6:
“Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Twitter that a letter had been sent to UN chief Antonio Guterres and EU top diplomat Josep Borrell, outlining “the broad electoral guarantees agreed for the upcoming parliamentary elections,” and inviting them to send observers. The move came a day after Maduro pardoned more than 100 lawmakers and associates of opposition leader Juan Guaido “in the interests of promoting national reconciliation” ahead of the polls.”
A week later the EU claimed that the three month preparation time was too short for it to send monitors:
“The European Union has received an invitation to observe parliamentary elections in Venezuela in December, but President Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian government so far has not met “minimum conditions” to allow it to do so, an EU spokeswoman said on Friday.The spokeswoman, in a statement to Reuters, said “time is already too short” to deploy a full EU Electoral Observation Mission if Maduro’s administration does not delay the vote beyond the current date of Dec 6.”
The “time is too short” argument is obviously nonsense. The UN and the EU were already invited in January and had plenty of time to prepare themselves:
“MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. /TASS/. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has invited observers from the United Nations, European Union and several Latin American countries to the parliamentary elections that will be held in the Bolivarian Republic later this year, the press service of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said on Friday.”
What the EU really wants though is to prevent the elections from taking place in an orderly manner:
“Venezuela’s opposition has split on whether to participate in the elections, which will see voters elect delegates in the National Assembly. The current assembly head, Juan Guaido, is recognized by the EU as Venezuela’s legitimate head-of-state, though Maduro retains control of the government and military. Guaido’s coalition of parties has vowed to boycott the election to avoid legitimizing an electoral process they deride as rigged. But in recent weeks another opposition bloc has emerged, under two-time former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, which says Guaido’s stance risks making the opposition irrelevant
and a strategy based on persuading foreign nations to impose sanctions on Maduro’s government
has failed.”
On Thursday, Stalin Gonzalez, an opposition lawmaker backing Capriles, told Bloomberg that Capriles’ faction would also boycott the election unless international observers agree to attend.
The opposition rejects to take part in the election unless European monitors are deployed. The EU then rejects to send monitors. It thereby sabotages an election that have an outcome the EU may not like.
Should the election take place and should Maduro’s party, for lack of opposition participation, win a solid majority the EU will claim that the election was unfair even when every vote will have been counted correctly.
This scheme of not sending election observers is not furthering democracy and legitimate elections. It is a willful sabotage of elections where the most likely outcome is contrary to the preferences of those observer organizations. It discredits their original purpose.”
Posted by b on September 13, 2020 at 10:48 UTC | Permalink
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Twelve among comments at Moon of Alabama
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Will observers be present at Russia’s regional elections today?
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Posted by: AtaBrit | Sep 13 2020 11:31 utc | 3″
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“”Ever since the Nicaraguan elections in the 80s, when the ex-Somozista fascists, now rebranded as democratic forces, were given instructions by Washington not to participate in order to invalidate the expected victory of the Sandinistas, this practice is followed whenever convenient….
The question is when the targeted countries will finally start to invalidate the “guardians of democracy and freedom”, a.k.a., the defenders of corporate fascism and neoliberalism. At some point it must be obvious that the OSCE, the EU organs and other similar entities must be openly declared unfit and disregarded. In the distant possibility that some people are genuinely committed (even for selfish interests) to…downright servitude to the Anglo-American empire and its vassals.
Posted by: Constantine | Sep 13 2020 12:09 utc | 4″
“Dear B, You’re assuming that OSCE is competent enough to be able to prepare for a major core mission of overseeing elections and ensuring they are carried out properly with full transparency and accountability.
Alexandra Brzozowski, OSCE facing leadership crisis (Euractiv.com, 20 July 2020)
“The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is facing an unprecedented leadership crisis, after failing to agree an extension of its four most senior posts, leaving many in Europe worried about how it will continue to work until successors are chosen in December.
The 57 member states failed to reach a consensus on extending the mandates of four of the OSCE’s top officials last week, as of Saturday (18 July), the body has been de facto leaderless.
Swiss diplomat Thomas Greminger was appointed OSCE Secretary General in 2017, for a three-year term, with the four posts being a political package deal struck under the Austrian OSCE chairmanship, thus ending a leadership vacuum in the OSCE. All four are now vacant.
Besides Greminger’s, the three other positions that have been vacated include the director of the organization’s election monitoring and pro-democracy work (ODIHR, Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir); OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (Harlem Desir), and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.
The OSCE’s consensus-based structure means even a single veto at the ministerial meeting in December can sink any reappointment…”
Perhaps the ODIHR’s failure to send observers to the Presidential elections in Belarus wasn’t just willful … it was also a sign of its disorganisation and lack of competent leadership.”
Posted by: Jen | Sep 13 2020 12:27 utc | 5″
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“”Posted by: Constantine | Sep 13 2020 12:09 utc | 4
“At some point it must be obvious that the OSCE, the EU organs and other similar entities must be openly declared unfit and disregarded.”
Precisely. Virtually every “international” organization is under the thumb of the US either directly, or via funding, or via indirect influence, to the point where there is literally *no* such thing as “international order” any more (if there ever was.)…
Bottom line: The only way to “free the world” is to get rid of the US government – by any means necessary. Notice I don’t say “overthrow it” or “destroy it” – that would be illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 2385. Advocating overthrow of Government. So I don’t actually use those words… You are free to believe that I mean doing so by legal voting (if you’re really stupid.)
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Sep 13 2020 12:33 utc | 6″
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“Western democracies” used to be admired and their certification of a “free and fair” election was the gold standard.
But oligarch capitalism and Empire has changed all that.
I expect that an alternative body will soon fill the void for observing/certifying elections. How soon before Western publics demand that their elections are certified by the new body?
This is the kind of development that some would call “incompetence” on the part of Deep State/Empire asshats who doggedly pursue their own interests via faux populist huckster leaders that apply lipstick to swine.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Sep 13 2020 13:25 utc | 8″
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“B “This scheme of not sending election observers is not furthering democracy and legitimate elections. It is a willful sabotage of elections where the most likely outcome is contrary to the preferences of those observer organizations. It discredits their original purpose.”
True B – I would only add that while refusing to send observers is wilful, intended to allow western governments, agencies and MSM, together with the westernized/westernizing younger, city (often bourgeois) people of the targeted country, to delegitimize elections in those countries they want for their own purposes (in the case of Belarus both to rape and plunder its economy while gobbling up the last stretch of Russia’s western borderlands for NATO)….
Posted by: Anne | Sep 13 2020 13:38 utc | 10″
““Ukraine showed that the OSCE is worthless, however the strategy of continuing to confront the OSCE with its own original aims and standards is still the correct choice because it doesn’t take much effort….
Like in everything else the US & Europe has already lost but they’re too dumb to realize, they’ll be gone before they get that far.
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Sep 13 2020 14:14 utc | 13″
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““This is an important article, a pointer to a perfidious tactic that completely destroys elections as an instrument for expressing the political will of a population, already limited in the setting of the bourgeois state, but still somewhat functional. Naturally, used only when the victory of ‘undesirable’ parties can be expected.”…
Posted by: pnyx | Sep 13 2020 15:37 utc | 14″
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“thanks b… excellent overview....the OSCE is becoming like the OPCW – manipulated by the west.. how undemocractic, but in keeping with the trend….
Posted by: james | Sep 13 2020 16:28 utc | 17″
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““It’s not like the elections weren’t going to be declared illegitimate no matter what. The US demanded as the ruler of the world to over see the Syrian elections. The US couldn’t prove any thing untoward happened and said they were legitimate elections. Then less than a year later changed it’s story to help fan sectarian violence.
Posted by: BraveNewWorld | Sep 13 2020 16:30 utc | 18″
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““These narrative control efforts by empire…have been going on for decades, guided by the global private finance elite….
The aggressive push back against alternative forms of social organization (multilateralism) by the West is being called out and this will hopefully lead to death by a thousand cuts which the world wishes to happen sooner rather than later.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 13 2020 16:39 utc | 19″
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Comment: Notice to anyone from the “Anglo American” empire who may be reading this: Don’t assume for one minute that we “accept” your depraved behavior. We’ll eventually free ourselves from you. Slaves have freed themselves before. Recently we’ve read how thrilled and surprised you were that it was so easy to imprison and impoverish us, overthrow our countries, install dictatorships, and force us to live in “lockdown” indefinitely, no end date, all based on an unverified UK computer model. Further, you think we were so “willing” and “compliant” about being imprisoned, that you want our imprisonment to be permanent, so we’d barely be noticeable on the planet, because, in your opinion, it would really help “the climate.” Your righteous indignation about “the climate” would keep our children out of school and
deprive them of sunlight they need to grow. Your obsession for decades
has been to somehow make us disappear. Deliberately impoverishing us and
depriving us of life because you think the climate is more important easily fits the definition of genocide. “The instigators and initiators of a genocide are cool-minded theorists first and barbarians only second.”
About genocide, from PBS:
“Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group. Genocide is therefore both the gravest and the greatest of the crimes against humanity:
In the same way as in a case of homicide the natural right of the individual to exist is implied, so in the case of genocide as a crime, the principle that any national, racial or religious group has a natural right to exist is clearly evident. Attempts to eliminate such groups violate this right to exist and to develop within the international community….
The instigators and initiators of a genocide are cool-minded theorists first and barbarians only second. The specificity of genocide does not arise from the extent of the killings, nor their savagery or resulting infamy, but solely from the intention: the destruction of a group.
Lemkin’s efforts and his single-minded perseverance brought about the Convention for the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which was voted into existence by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in 1948. After stating in Article 1 that genocide is a crime under international law, the Convention laid down the following definition:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. killing members of the group;
b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.*
This definition, although lessening the uniqueness of Lemkin’s concepts to some extent, is nonetheless of remarkable significance. Some UN member states wanted to go further to include the notion of cultural or economic genocide, others would have added political motivations. The French representative remarked at the time, ‘even if crimes of genocide were committed for racial or religious reasons in the past, it is clear that the motivation for such crimes in future will be mainly political.”…
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“”I guess there’s no arguing that the elite are eliminating the old world order of sovereign countries and replacing that system with corporate industrial zones run by [IMF, World Bank, and] corporate boards….
The rest of us live in a permanent underclass where upward mobility depends upon your service to the neofeudal lords that have been hand picked by the covert agency useful idiots.
Posted by: dave | Sep 13 2020 11:07 utc | 1″
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