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Observation mission: Kyrgyz presidential election failed to meet key OSCE commitments, despite some positive elements

24 July 2009 14:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Victoria Dementyeva â€“ APA. Kyrgyzstanâ€™s presidential election failed to meet key OSCE commitments, despite some positive elements, the OSCE election observation mission concluded in a preliminary statement released on Friday, APA reports. â€œWe are pleased to see some political pluralism and an active civil society, but this was undermined by an overall uneven playing field in which the distinction between the ruling party and the State was blurred,â€ said Senator Consiglio Di Nino, Special Co-ordinator of the OSCE short-term observers and Head of the delegation of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. â€œVoters could choose from a number of presidential candidates and civil society played an important role in the election process. But observers also stressed that the incumbent gained an unfair advantage over his opponents through the misuse of administrative resources and bias in the media coverage of the campaign, which did not allow voters to make an informed choiceâ€, said Radmila Å ekerinska, the Head of the election observation mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). â€œElection day was marred by many problems and irregularities, including ballot box stuffing, inaccuracies in the voter lists, and multiple voting. The process further deteriorated during the vote count and the tabulation of results, with observers evaluating this part of the process negatively in more than half of observationsâ€.