You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Belarusian. (March 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Belarusian Wikipedia article at [[:be:Парламенцкія выбары ў Беларусі (2012)]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|be|Парламенцкія выбары ў Беларусі (2012)}} to the talk page.
According to the 1994 electoral law,[2] the 110 members of the House of Representatives were elected in single-member districts.[1] Winning candidates had to achieve an absolute majority of the vote in their constituency and turnout was required to be 50% or more.[1] If neither were achieved, a second round would have been held, contested by the two candidates from the first round with the most votes.[2] For the second round the turnout threshold was reduced to 25%, except in cases in which there is only one candidate contesting the second round, in which case it was abolished.[1] If only one candidate ran in the second round, they still had to achieve a majority of the vote.[1]
The voting age was set at 18, whilst candidates had to be at least 21.[2] Members of the Council of the Republic and members of a local councils were ineligible for election to the House of Representatives.[2] Candidates had to collect at least 1,000 signatures from voters in the constituency they intended to run in.[2]
Voting centres were open from 08:00 to around 20:00. Four previous days of early voting for students, armed service staff and police resulted in at a voter turnout of at least 19%, according to the election commission.[3]
The two main opposition parties, including the United Civic Party (UCP), called for voters to go fishing or pick mushrooms in avoiding to vote so as not to give the election and new parliament legitimacy. The UCP posted a video on YouTube that showed its activists picking mushrooms, playing chess and reading books as an alternative to voting. Party leader Anatoly Lebedko also said that protests were banned and groups could not hand out leaflets, with those who tried being stopped by police and the leaflets being seized. President Alexander Lukashenko reacted by saying that the opposition parties were "afraid of going to the people." In turn, opposition activists accused the government of inducing higher education students to vote sometimes under the threat of losing subsidies for accommodation. In the week prior to the election, state security police broke up gatherings of activists that had sought to urge potential voters to cook borshch instead, while several of them were arrested along with media photographers. Some of photographers were later released after about two hours. Independent political analyst Alexander Klaskovsky was quoted as saying: "The opposition is virtually broken. It has few resources and there is no real programme."[3]
Results
109 of 110 MPs were elected receiving an absolute majority with the necessary turnout, with only the constituency of Novobelitsky failing to elect a candidate in the first round.[6] Of the independent candidates, 63 were members of Belaya Rus.[7]
The Central Election Commission declared voter turnout had been at least 65.9%, thus validating the result. However, other independent monitors suggested a turnout of 30%. Vitaly Rymashevsky, the co-chairman of the Belarus Christian Democracy party, said: "The election commission is unscrupulously lying as these figures are so radically different from those of observers." On 23 September, Lidya Yermoshina, the head of the CEC, said that with a final tally for 109 seats it was "doubtful" that the opposition won any seats.[3]
The vacant seat was later taken by an independent.[8]
.svg)
