On September 19, 2024, the Republic of Belarus assumed the presidency in the Advisory Council of Heads of electoral bodies of CIS Member States (hereinafter referred to as the Advisory Council). The Commonwealth states are closely monitoring the development of this "young" body. The confirmation was the meeting of Alexander Lukashenko with the Heads of electoral bodies and the leadership of the Executive Committee and the IPA CIS. The democratization of the electoral process, the authenticity of which should be measured by its own standards of ensuring electoral security and citizens' confidence in the election results, became the red thread of the discussion of senior officials.
The outcomes of the Minsk meeting of the Advisory Council indicate the existence of a strategic goal – the development of sustainable sovereign electoral systems. A new Youth Council is being created under the Advisory Council, a principled position on countering interference in elections has been agreed, and most importantly, the process of developing regional standards for international election observation has been intensified.
Initiatives of the Republic of Belarus
The Advisory Council meeting in Minsk identified the development of effective standards for international election observation as a task of strategic importance. The groundwork had already been laid: in the final statement, the Heads of electoral bodies condemned any attempts to interfere, reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of avoiding double standards, the rule of law, respect for historical, cultural and legal peculiarities of states, equal dialogue, political neutrality and impartiality during international election observation.
The Belarusian presidency has outlined a new area of cooperation – the exchange of experience in training election organizers. The emphasis is natural: according to expert estimates, the pace of discrediting electoral systems is increasing through pseudo-training of organizers and participants of the electoral process on the Internet and social networks. Another priority is to improve the legal culture of young people: the Belarusian initiative is planning to create a youth structure under the Advisory Council and distribute effective methods of working with teaching staff. It is planned to exchange the best practices in the field of digitalization of electoral procedures.
The initiatives of the Belarusian chairmanship of the Advisory Council follow global trends in the field of international electoral standards: 1) consolidation of interstate cooperation as an international standard; 2) improvement of standards for analytical support of elections; 3) regionalization of effective international standards.
Consolidation of interstate cooperation as an international standard
The high level of attention to the Advisory Council is due to its interstate nature. Earlier in the 1990s, the number of international election observers expanded due to non-governmental organizations (hereinafter referred to as NGOs). As an example, it is enough to mention the practice of imposing representatives of Western NGOs as observers, teachers, and often members of election commissions. The participation of NGOs in the political process was presented as an "international standard", but in fact acted as a channel for foreign financing of the "right party" or an instrument for disrupting elections.
Today, interstate cooperation is once again becoming the standard. Intergovernmental organizations have joined the international observation: the SCO, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, the Organization of Turkic States. The Advisory Council is an interstate body with its main function being to improve the electoral process based on the CIS Member States experience.
Improving standards for analytical support of elections
The activation of the Advisory Council is in line with the improvement of standards for analytical support of elections, in particular in the field of international observation of elections and referendums. With the activation of international observation in the 1990s, the problem of imposing methodologies corresponding to the approach of a narrow group of States became clearly apparent. It turned out that reports of observation missions largely depend on the manner of posing questions, methodological angle, experience, social portrait, as well as the political position of the observer.
Once reputable platforms expanded their powers in the field of observation, de facto creating tools for intervention (for example, the phenomenon of intervention "East of Vienna": sending OSCE missions that are heterogeneous in composition and scope of authority). Numerous ODIHR reports clearly show the bespoke nature of the questions raised. For example, priority is given to elections rather than referendums, and the need for the development of Western-style political systems is pointed out, for example, during the modeling of party building or the formation of election commissions. The red line is criticism of government, not corporate, administration, for example, state participation in the media. In fact, the idea of opening the market, including information, to Western corporations is being promoted. For example, in the case of digitalization of the voter register, Western missions believe that the data should be stored on servers owned by corporations, not the state. Western scientists themselves emphasize the dependence between Western lending and the assessments of the observation missions of the United States, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and the European Union: the tone of the assessment can be predicted through the indicators of the World Bank, as a result, if the indicators are positive, then the assessment of Western missions is highly likely to be positive.
Today, such standards are relevant that would prevent interference in electoral processes under the guise of analytical activity. There is a growing demand for methodological uniformity as a standard for analytical support of elections. The emergence of new topics, such as the digitalization of the electoral process, the increasing complexity of forms of intervention – all this increases the demand for a competent international observer, working according to a uniformly applied methodology and not claiming either the status of a “judge” or, even more so, the status of a “participant in the political process”.
It is noteworthy that the Advisory Council can combine the already accumulated experience and enhance the cumulative effect. The Executive Committee and the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, traditionally implementing international election observation, participate in meetings of the Advisory Council with the right of advisory vote. The International Institute for Monitoring Democracy Development of the IPA CIS has serious practices in the methodology of international election observation. Besides, a significant potential is contained in the exchange of experience among leading state analytical centers, as well as institutions of national public election observation.
Regionalization of effective international standards
The CIS is building a regional system for the international electoral standards development, which corresponds to practice in other regions of the world. When organizing elections, each country, including Belarus, is guided by national traditions, political and social characteristics, and relevant requests of citizens. Since the Advisory Council unites countries with similar approaches, it is in the CIS that they "feel" the situation on earth better, which allows them to share real-world experience.
The regionalization of international standards is caused by the fact that larger organizations have been privatized by a narrow group of States through financing and personnel. As a result, the practical value of Western observers who think in the old categories has seriously decreased. OSCE reports continue to be politicized, and Western foundations are still promoting their own standards under the guise of "international" ones. Despite the fact that attempts to exclude Belarus and Russia from the European Association of Election Organizers ended with the collapse of the Association, the Western coalition continues to call for the exclusion of Belarus and Russia from the Association of World Election Bodies. There is a deliberate destruction of the mechanisms of pan-European cooperation, which expedites the process of regionalization of international standards in the CIS.
Countering electoral interference
Historically, two instruments have been simultaneously incorporated into international electoral documents: one as a quasi-legal basis for intervention, and the other as a limiter for external influence. In the 20th century, they ensured more or less equitable geographical representation in the secretariats, preventing international organizations from finally becoming instruments of lobbying. In addition, interference was limited by including in international treaties the standards of the rule of law, respect for historical, cultural and legal features, subsidiarity, and interstate interaction. The OSCE ODIHR does not have the right to defend individual candidates or train them in election disruption technologies, neither it has the right to make preliminary conclusions, make pre-election comments or call for reforms. All this contradicts the provision of the 1990 Copenhagen Document that international observers do not interfere in the electoral process.
But the reality is that the standards and tools developed in the 1990s no longer correspond to modern realities. A public demand for electoral security and consideration of the peculiarities of national culture has been added to the course of political development. This created the need for effective international instruments. After all, the idea of establishing a coordinating body between the elections organizers was recorded back in 2002, let's recall the Interstate Electoral Council provided for in Article 21 of the Chisinau Convention.
The Advisory Council stands out favorably for respecting the sovereignty of each State in the course of the exchange of experience to improve electoral processes. Such a structure is in demand today not only in the Commonwealth, but also beyond its borders. A significant step was the adoption of a statement by the heads of election commissions on developing regional standards for international observation. Let there be discussions about the wording: regardless of whether they are agreed or unified, these standards really work, as they are based on sovereignty, professionalism and national interests. The CIS countries already have best practices, on which, apparently, the presidency of the Republic of Belarus in the Advisory Council of Heads of electoral bodies of CIS States will be based.