MINSK, January 27. /TASS/. There is no longer any Western domination on election monitoring, while the absence of Western observers in Sunday’s voting for president in Belarus is irrelevant, a senior Russian senator said.
"The Western domination on election oversight has clearly ended - and that is good news. The fact that they [Western election monitors] were absent from the Republic of Belarus is absolutely irrelevant to either the integrity of the election, the election process itself or the evaluation that we have already shared," Konstantin Kosachev, the deputy Speaker of the Federation Council (the upper chamber of the Russian parliament), said at a news conference.
Earlier, he said that the presidential election was held in Belarus to the highest international standards.
Kosachev highlighted the United States, where he stated that a majority of states prohibit international election monitors, including those from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), from any elections, with international observers facing a prison sentence of up to 7 years for approaching closer than 30 meters to polling stations.