Lukašenka appoints Ihar Karpenka head of the Central Elections Committee

December 13. Aliaksandar Lukašenka has appointed Ihar Karpenka as the head of Central Committee on Elections and Referenda, according to a Telegram channel linked to Mr. Lukasenka’s press office.

Mr. Karpenka served as the minister of education since December 2016.

The incumbent replaces Mrs. Lidzija Jarmošina, who has been at the helm of the Commission since 6 December 1996, after the demotion of Mr. Viktar Hančar, a strong opponent of Mr. Lukašenka. The former disappeared without a trace on 16 september 1999.

Mr. Karpenka was born on 28 April, 1964 in the city of Novokuznetsk, in Russia’s Kemerovo Region.

He graduated from Minsk State Pedagogical Institute. Although trained to become a teacher of history and social studies, he started working as a pioneer counselor at school, and then was involved with Komsomol, the USSR official youth organization.

In 1984, he joined the Communist Party. After the dissolution of the USSR he revived the Communist Party of Belarus, heading it until October 2012. The CPB has always been pro-government.

Karpenka served as a deputy of the House of Representatives (lower chamber of the Parliament) during its third and fourth convocations (2004-2012). In July 2011 he became deputy chairman of the Minsk City Executive Committee, in charge of the ideological sphere, socio-political and socio-cultural activities, education, health, physical culture, sports and tourism, social protection and pensions.

Aliaksandar Lukašenka pointed at hard work that awaited Mr. Karpenka in the new capacity of chairman of the Central Election Commission in relation to the upcoming constitutional referendum and the subsequent election campaigns. Having praised Mr. Karpenka as “an experienced” bureaucrat, Mr. Lukašenka said the upcoming challenges the newly appointed Head of the Commission will have to face included the Referendum on the proposed changes to the Constitution (to be held in February), as well as elections of the local councils and the Parliament (to be held simultaneously at a later stage) and even the elections of the president. The terms of the latter, according to Lukašenka, might “depend on the situation in Belarus”. Mr. Karpenka’s new task, according to Lukašenka, is not only to ensure the coming elections yield favorable results, but also to demonstrate the transparency of the electoral procedures and independence of the Central Commission and its local branches.

In May 2020, the outgoing head of the commission, Lidzija Jarmošina said in an interview with the BelaPAN news company that the presidential elections in August, 2020 would most likely be her last. When asked “What are your plans after such a big stage in your life is over?” Jarmošina replied, “like everyone else’s: living what is left of my life. It gets harder for me to travel with every passing year. And all my travels are likely to be to two places — Babrujsk and Kaliningrad.” Earlier Jarmošina had said that those were the cities where friends lived. Jarmošina’s only son died in 2017.