MINSK, January 27. /TASS/. Westerners have no moral right to lecture the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) about the electoral process, CIS Secretary General Sergey Lebedev told reporters following a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
"They (Westerners - TASS) do not have the moral authority to give an assessment of our elections. I have spent years working in the West, in Western Germany, and in the United States. I saw their 'democracy' with my own eyes. What are we talking about? They don’t have any moral right to lecture us," news agency BelTA quoted Lebedev as saying.
Lebedev, who led a CIS monitoring mission for the presidential elections in Belarus, joked that CIS monitors were like family to Belarus. Having been there many times, they "always have a better understanding of how their fraternal nation behaves," he pointed out, adding, that the recent US presidential election could hardly be called democratic.
According to him, Western Europe, too, has "regularly and grossly interfered in CIS elections." He referred to the latest elections in Georgia and Moldova. While "several EU foreign ministers and other politicians rioted on Tbilisi’s streets" in Georgia, "the Romanian president himself visited Moldova ahead of the election to support a candidate," Lebedev shared.
Lukashenko won Sunday’s presidential election with 86.82% of the vote, early results from the Belarusian Central Election Commission showed. Some global leaders have already congratulated him on winning the election.