Belarusians started voting on Sunday, with president Alexander Lukashenko anticipated to cruise to victory unchallenged for a seventh time period, prolonging his three-decade authoritarian rule.
Lukashenko – a 70-year-old former collective farm boss – has been in energy in reclusive, Moscow-allied Belarus since 1994.
Polls opened at 08:00 am (0500 GMT) in Minsk’s first presidential vote since Lukashenko suppressed mass protests towards his rule in 2020. He has since allowed Moscow to make use of Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine in 2022.
The opposition and the West stated Lukashenko rigged the final vote and the authorities cracked down on demonstrations, with greater than a thousand individuals nonetheless jailed.
All of Lukashenko’s political opponents are both in jail – some held incommunicado – or in exile together with tens of hundreds of Belarusians who’ve fled since 2020.
“All our opponents and enemies ought to perceive: don’t hope, we’ll by no means repeat what we had in 2020,” Lukashenko informed a stadium in Minsk throughout a rigorously choreographed ceremony Friday.
Most individuals in Belarus have solely distant reminiscences of life within the landlocked nation earlier than Lukashenko, who was 39 when he received the primary nationwide election in Belarus because it gained independence from the Soviet Union.
Criticism of the strongman is banned in Belarus. Most individuals AFP spoke to in Minsk and different cities voiced assist for him, however have been nonetheless afraid of giving their surnames.
The opposite candidates operating towards Lukashenko have been picked to offer the election an air of democracy and few know who they’re.
“I’ll vote for Lukashenko as a result of issues have improved since he turned president (in 1994),” stated 42-year-old farmer Alexei within the tiny village of Gubichi in south-eastern Belarus.
He earns about 300 euros a month promoting milk.
However, like many in Belarus, he’s frightened in regards to the warfare in neighbouring Ukraine.
In 2022, Russian troops entered Ukraine from a number of instructions, together with from Belarus. The next 12 months, Russia despatched tactical nuclear weapons to the nation, which borders Nato nations.
Alexei stated he wished “for there to not be a warfare”.
The federal government’s narrative has been to say that Lukashenko assured peace and order in Belarus, accusing 2020 avenue protest leaders of stitching chaos.
The United Nations estimates that 300,000 Belarusians have left the nation since 2020 – largely to Poland and Lithuania – out of a inhabitants of 9 million.
They will be unable to forged ballots, with Belarus having scrapped voting overseas.
Exiled opposition chief Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya denounced the vote as a “farce” in a January interview with AFP.
Her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, has been held incommunicado for nearly a 12 months.
She urged dissidents to organize for a chance to vary their nation however conceded “it was not the second”.
Whereas Lukashenko as soon as rigorously balanced his relations between the European Union and Moscow, since 2020 he has turn out to be politically and economically reliant on Russia.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s prime diplomat, referred to as the election a “sham” in a posting on X Saturday and stated “Lukashenko doesn’t have any legitimacy”.
Generally known as “Europe’s final dictator” – a nickname he embraces – Lukashenko’s Belarus has retained a lot of the Soviet Union’s traditions and infrastructure.
The nation’s economic system is basically state-planned and Lukashenko scrapped Belarus’s white-red-white flag within the Nineteen Nineties – which has since turn out to be the image of the opposition.
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