Russia Slams OSCE Election Monitoring

At the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on January 13 Russian delegation slammed OSCE’s election observation stating that its “methodology in election monitoring and its ambition to play the role of a supra-national arbiter were examples of political hypocrisy.”

Observers say Russia proposes to significantly weaken OSCE’s democratization branch – Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and asks for increasing the number of CIS and Russia representatives in election monitoring missions.