Longtime chief Alexander Lukashenko is about 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 in opposition to 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 searching for a seventh time period.
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 – largely 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 mentioned the lead-up to the vote was marked by each an absence of enthusiasm and campaigning.
“Lukashenko himself has mentioned he’s too busy operating the nation to exit marketing campaign,” he mentioned, 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 mentioned now shouldn’t be the time to protest,” Smith mentioned.
Nonetheless, Smith famous that authorities had largely allowed international press to cowl the election – a attainable signal that Lukashenko may need “to attempt to restore relations with the West”.
“He possibly sees that maybe later within the yr there is perhaps some kind of a peace deal [between Russia and] Ukraine and he needs to place Belarus for what occurs after … and what function 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 assist from shut ally Russia.
The 4 candidates operating in opposition to 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 getting into the race not in opposition to, however along with Lukashenko, and I’m able to function his vanguard,” mentioned 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, truly received 1.7 % of the vote in 2020 and says she is the “solely democratic different to Lukashenko”, promising to foyer for liberating political prisoners however warning supporters in opposition to “extreme initiative”.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s prime diplomat, known as the election a “sham” in a publish on X, saying “Lukashenko doesn’t have any legitimacy”.
