It is quite natural and expected that observers from Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were not invited to participate in monitoring the presidential elections in the Russian Federation. This was stated by HRC member Independent Public Monitoring (IPM) President Alexander Brod, according to the NOM website.
He emphasized that the OSCE is an organization that today has an openly hostile attitude towards Russia. According to him, the organization is promoting a Russophobic agenda within its own walls, rather than helping to ensure security and cooperation in Europe.
Brod also added that the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has acted with direct bias on more than one occasion.
“The Russian side has repeatedly called for the development of consensus approaches to the organization and standards of international monitoring. There are many questions about the decision-making methodology, about the advisability of sending missions to certain countries, about the quantitative disproportionality of the composition of observation missions and, of course, about the obvious political bias when drawing conclusions about the democracy of the electoral process in different countries. countries,” the expert noted.
He also believes that ODIHR often makes decisions in a purely geopolitical context
Broad also noted that there is no monopoly on foreign (international) surveillance. The HRC member recalled that Russia has never refused and has not refused to invite foreign observers in addition to an unprecedented level of national monitoring organization.
“According to the Russian Central Election Commission, up to a thousand foreign observers from hundreds of countries are expected. The Russian Foreign Ministry invited representatives of the CIS and SCO. Traditionally, representatives of national parliaments will take part in the observation at the invitation of the State Duma and the Federation Council. Therefore, efforts to reduce international monitoring to the sole control of OSCE structures are absurd. The world is much larger, more complex and more diverse. And double standards have no place in elections,” concluded Alexander Brod.
Formerly at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statedHe noted that the absence of OSCE/ODIHR representatives in the Russian presidential elections will not affect the quality of international observation. The ministry added that ODIHR was discredited, so its observers had nothing to do with the elections to be held in Russia in March.