Not Fair, Not Democratic
From the desk of Alexandra Colen
Next Sunday, the Belgians go to the polls. For various reasons the elections can hardly be called fair and democratic. Today the leadership of Vlaams Belang, Belgium’s largest party which strives for the independence of Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking northern half, met a delegation of OSCE observers to complain about various violations of the rules as outlined in the OSCE’s 2005 “Election Observation Handbook” (referred to below as EOH).
VB Senator Jurgen Ceder listed ten serious violations:
• Electronic voting without certification procedures
• Discrimination in campaign financing
• Candidates and political parties do not have access to the media on a non-discriminatory basis
• The state media are clearly biased
• Paid political advertising in daily newspapers is available to all parties, except one
• One political party cannot hold meetings in the capital
• Intimidation of candidates
• One party has been banned. Next step will be exclusion of certain candidates from the right to participate in elections• The number of representatives is not proportional to the size of the electorate
• The elections in the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde constituency are unconstitutional
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2173