As Belarus staged a carefully planned election on Sunday that was almost certain to give the 70-year-old despot another term on top of his three decades in power, the smiling visage of President Alexander Lukashenko peered out from campaign posters all around the country.
Required! The posters state this alongside a picture of Lukashenko holding his hands together. In campaign films, groups of voters allegedly answered with this statement when asked if they wanted him to serve again.
However, his opponents might disagree, as many of them have been imprisoned or banished overseas as a result of his relentless crackdown on free speech and criticism. Similar to the previous election in 2020, which led to months of protests that were unheard of in the history of the 9 million-person nation, they claim that this one is a farce.
Thousands of people were beaten during the crackdown, which resulted in over 65,000 arrests and Western censure and penalties.
His tyrannical reign since 1994 Known as Europe’s Last Dictator, Lukashenko assumed power two years after the fall of the Soviet Union and was supported politically and financially by Russia, a close ally.
Despite hosting some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons and allowing Moscow to invade Ukraine in 2022, he ran on a platform of peace and security, claiming he had prevented Belarus from becoming involved in a conflict.
In his trademark bluntness, Lukashenko stated that a dictatorship like Belarus is preferable to a democracy like Ukraine.
Fearing a repeat of election unrest
He survived the 2020 demonstrations thanks to his reliance on the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been in office for 25 years.
According to observers, Lukashenko postponed the vote from August to January because he was afraid of a recurrence of those large-scale protests in the midst of economic difficulties and the conflict in Ukraine. He merely encounters token resistance.
According to Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich, Lukashenko chose the most certain course of action this time around because the trauma of the 2020 protests was so severe. This is because voting appears to be more of a special operation to hold onto power than an election.
On numerous occasions, Lukashenko stated that he was not holding onto power and would softly and peacefully pass it on to the next generation.
Nikolai, his 20-year-old son, played the piano at campaign rallies, signed autographs, and conducted interviews around the nation. Even though he was observed having trouble walking and occasionally speaking in a raspy voice, his father has not said anything about his own health.
Only when a leader is getting ready to retire does the succession question come into play. But according to Karbalevich, Lukashenko will not go.
Top political opponents imprisoned or exiled
Prominent opponents were imprisoned or fled overseas. Nearly 1,300 political prisoners are detained in the nation, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, who founded the Viasna Human Rights Center.
Lukashenko has pardoned almost 250 individuals since July. In operations against the friends and family of political prisoners, officials have arrested hundreds more people in an effort to quell opposition.
According to Viasna, 188 persons were arrested by authorities just last month. According to rights advocates, police have called activists and donors to opposition organizations and made them sign documents warning them against taking part in unapproved protests.
All four of Lukashenko’s opponents are devoted to him.
The Communist Party candidate Sergei Syrankov, who supports criminalizing LGBTQ+ acts and restoring monuments to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, declared, “I’m entering the race not against, but together with Lukashenko, and I’m ready to serve as his vanguard.”
The leader of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice, Alexander Khizhnyak, led a Minsk polling precinct in 2020 and pledged to stop similar disruptions in the future.
The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Oleg Gaidukevich, backed Lukashenko in 2020 and exhorted other contenders to make Lukashenko’s adversaries sick.
Hanna Kanapatskaya, the fourth contender, received 1.7% of the vote in 2020 and claims to be the sole democratic option to Lukashenko. She has warned supporters against taking on too much work and has pledged to advocate for the release of political prisoners.
Opposition leader calls election a senseless farce
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition leader in exile who left Belarus due to pressure from the government after running against the president in 2020, told The Associated Press that Sunday’s election was a Lukashenko ritual and a pointless farce.
According to her, voters should cross out every item on the ballot, and foreign leaders shouldn’t acknowledge the outcome of a nation where political prisoners fill prisons and all alternative parties and independent media have been crushed.
According to her, Lukashenko acts as if hundreds of thousands of people are still outside his palace, despite the fact that the repressions have gotten even more ruthless as this vote without choice draws near.
The European Union threatened fresh measures after rejecting Sunday’s election in Belarus as illegal.
In a joint statement, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos warned that today’s fake election in Belarus was neither free nor fair.
Lukashenko told reporters shortly after casting his ballot in Minsk on Sunday, bringing his white Pomeranian puppy with him, that he did not look to the EU for approval or recognition.
According to him, the most important thing is that Belarusians accept these elections and that they conclude amicably.
Lukashenko stated during a lengthy news conference that he does not exclude out rerunning for the presidency in 2030.
Reporters Without Borders, a group that advocates for media freedom, complained to the International Criminal Court about Lukashenko’s suppression of free speech, which has resulted in the detention of 397 journalists since 2020. 43 people are incarcerated, it stated.
Fears of vote-rigging
The Central Election Commission estimates that 6.8 million people are eligible to vote. About 500,000 individuals, however, have left Belarus and are unable to cast ballots.
The commission said that turnout was 81.85% two hours before polls closed at 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT), however it was nearly impossible to confirm that number due to a lack of independent monitoring.
At home, the opposition said that early voting, which started on Tuesday, has made it easier for irregularities to occur because ballot boxes are left unsecured until election day. Over the course of five days of early voting, a record 41.81% of voters cast votes. In the meantime, Viasna activists claimed that Lukashenko’s government was preventing access to VPN services, which are frequently used to circumvent censorship, and reported internet problems nationwide.
In response to the opposition’s 2020 appeal for voters to take images of their ballots in order to make it more difficult for authorities to rig the vote, polling places have taken down the curtains covering ballot boxes and prohibited voters from taking pictures of their ballots.
Large-scale police drills were held before to the election. Helmeted riot police were seen using truncheons to pound their shields in preparation for protest dispersals, according to a video released by the Interior Ministry. Another showed an officer yanking the elbow of a man who was pretending to be a voter near a voting box and making an arrest.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had been watching earlier elections, was initially denied access by Belarus. This month, when it was already too late to plan a monitoring mission, it took a different approach and asked the OSCE.
Increasing dependence on Russia
Lukashenko’s gamesmanship of exploiting the West to attempt to get more subsidies from the Kremlin has ended as a result of his backing for the war in Ukraine, which has caused Belarus’s relations with the US and the EU to deteriorate.
He mentioned that Russian nuclear weapons were stationed in Belarus as a peace guarantee and declared that, should he be reelected, his first official visit would be to Moscow.
According to Artyom Shraybman, a Belarus specialist with the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center, Lukashenko could manipulate and play Russia against the West until 2020, but now that Belarus is almost a satellite of Russia, this election in the vein of North Korea ties the Belarusian leader to the Kremlin even more, shortening the leash.
According to him, Lukashenko might attempt to lessen his complete reliance on Russia after the election by attempting to reconnect with the West.
According to Shraybman, Lukashenko’s short-term objective is to use the election to bolster his legitimacy and attempt to break through his isolation in order to at least begin discussions with the West about lifting sanctions.
American woman released from detention
The announcement by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X on Sunday that Belarus had unilaterally released a U.S. citizen, Anastassia Nuhfer, was an early indication of Minsk’s intention to reengage with the West.
Her identity hadn’t been made public or included on lists of political prisoners, which surprised the public and even Belarusian rights campaigners.