Longtime chief Alexander Lukashenko is ready to win a seventh phrases as he runs unopposed by real challengers.
Polls are below method in Belarus for a presidential election, with longtime chief Alexander Lukashenko anticipated to increase his greater than three a long time in energy within the absence of any actual opposition.
Voters started casting their ballots at 8am native time (05:00 GMT) on Sunday within the nation’s first presidential vote since Lukashenko crushed mass protests towards his authorities in 2020 and permitted Russia to make use of Belarusian territory for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The 70-year-old former collective farm boss has been in energy in Belarus since 1994 and is seeking a seventh term.
The nation’s final presidential election in 2020 ended with nationwide protests, unprecedented within the historical past of the nation of 9 million folks. The opposition and Western nations accused Lukashenko of rigging the election and imposed sanctions.
In response, his authorities launched a sweeping crackdown, leaving greater than 1,000 folks imprisoned, together with Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, founding father of the Viasna Human Rights Centre.
The United Nations estimates that some 300,000 Belarusians have left the nation since 2020 – principally to Poland and Lithuania. They won’t be able to vote, with Belarus having scrapped voting overseas.
“All our opponents and enemies ought to perceive: don’t hope, we are going to by no means repeat what we had in 2020,” Lukashenko informed a stadium in Minsk throughout a ceremony on Friday.
Reporting from a polling centre within the capital, Minsk, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith stated the lead-up to the vote was marked by each an absence of enthusiasm and campaigning.
“Lukashenko himself has stated he’s too busy working the nation to exit marketing campaign,” he stated, including that it was arduous to gauge the temper within the nation as folks appeared unwilling to talk overtly.
“There [appears to be] no urge for food to protest as a result of folks know that they danger getting arrested – and even abroad opposition teams have stated now isn’t the time to protest,” Smith stated.
Nonetheless, Smith famous that authorities had largely allowed overseas press to cowl the election – a potential signal that Lukashenko may need “to attempt to restore relations with the West”.
“He possibly sees that maybe later within the 12 months there could be some type of a peace deal [between Russia and] Ukraine and he needs to place Belarus for what occurs after … and what position Belarus may play,” Smith added.
‘Europe’s final dictator’
Lukashenko’s iron-fisted rule, which started two years after the demise of the Soviet Union, earned him the nickname of “Europe’s final dictator” – which he embraces – counting on subsidies and political help from shut ally Russia.
The 4 candidates working towards Lukashenko have been picked to offer the election an air of democracy and few know who they’re. They’re loyal to him and reward his rule.
“I’m coming into the race not towards, however along with Lukashenko, and I’m able to function his vanguard,” stated Communist Get together candidate Sergei Syrankov, who favours criminalising LGBTQ actions and rebuilding monuments to Soviet chief Joseph Stalin.
Candidate Alexander Khizhnyak, head of the Republican Get together of Labour and Justice, led a voting precinct in Minsk in 2020 and promised to forestall a “repeat of disturbances”.
Oleg Gaidukevich, head of the Liberal Democratic Get together, supported Lukashenko in 2020 and urged fellow candidates to “make Lukashenko’s enemies nauseous”.
The fourth challenger, Hanna Kanapatskaya, really received 1.7 p.c of the vote in 2020 and says she is the “solely democratic various to Lukashenko”, promising to foyer for liberating political prisoners however warning supporters towards “extreme initiative”.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high diplomat, referred to as the election a “sham” in a publish on X, saying “Lukashenko doesn’t have any legitimacy”.
