Today the scandal over voting ballots has occurred in the Central Election Committee. Kokumbai Turusbekov, a member of the CEC has informed that the photo of the voting ballot appeared online. Apparently, it was posted on Edil Baisalov’s blog. According to the national legsilation, the ballot can be publicized only on the date of the vote, December 16, said Kokumbai Turusbekov to AKIpress. The CEC member said this is the first time in Kyrgyzstan’s history that ballots are posted on the website before the elections.

This is the first time when the ballot is posted in the form it is published at the printing house.

With this regard, the CEC had a session today during which they cancelled the registration of Edil Baisalov’s candidacy for membership in Parliament. The committee has also adopted a decree to invalidate the ballots and destroy them. New ballots are going to be printed, the payment of which, according to CEC, should be covered by the Social Democratic Party.

On Sunday evening, Edil Baisalov, an Executive Secretary of the Social Democratic Party, was overseeing the printing process of the ballots in the printing house Uchkun. After that, during the round table on Monday he openly criticized the process of ballots printing. He was concerned that there was no strict oversight over the quantity of printed ballots. He said (AKIpress):

Such simple ballots can be printed out at least on 30-40 printing presses. The ballots lack any security features or watermarks. Nobody from CEC was present there.

Well, a bit sad scenario. Of course, even if the ballot’s photo was posted on the blog, it is now difficult to prove it. Baisalov on his blog says that CEC is trying to manipulate and threaten him. He believes that he did not commit any illegal action or crime and did not disclose any secret information.