Belarusian presidential elections: Who will oppose Lukashenko, does it matter? | News about elections

Belarusians vote in presidential elections on Sunday as President Alexander Lukashenko seeks a seventh term in power.

For the last 30 years, Lukashenko (70), who many analysts called “the last European dictator”, ruled the country with an iron hand, stifling all opposition and voices against him.

The president, who has not been on the campaign trail these days, told factory workers last week: “To be honest, I don’t follow it. I just don’t have time for that.”

But after the last election in 2020, when the leader was declared the winner despite reports of a flood of popular anger against him, mass protests broke out. The opposition and the West claimed his victory was fake and stolen from candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced to flee the country.

Now, with his political opponents either in jail or in exile, his success on Sunday is believed to be all but guaranteed.

The election was originally planned for August, but was moved to the dead of winter. There was a reason, Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich told The Associated Press: “There will be no mass protests in icy January.”

Here’s what you need to know about the election:

When do the ballots open?

Polls across the country opened at 8am (05:00 GMT) and remained open until 20:00 (17:00 GMT).

Belarus operates under a simple majority system, where citizens vote for the head of state and the legislature every five years.

Belarusians over the age of 18 will be able to participate.

The election results should be known by February 5, and the second round, if necessary, will be on February 12.

How many people are expected to vote?

The state news agency BelTA reported on Friday that after three days of early voting, the turnout was 27.15 percent.

BelTA reported last week that in a December poll that interviewed 1,500 people, 85.5 percent of registered voters said they would vote in the upcoming election.

According to Statistics, a data collection platform, approximately 84 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the August 2020 presidential election.

It is added that the capital Minsk recorded the lowest voter turnout of “over 66 percent”.

However, Belarusians from abroad will be able to participate in the elections only if they return to the country and vote at a regional polling station.

Who is running against Lukashenko?

According to the country’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC), four candidates are registered to contest Sunday’s election.

Liberal Democrat President Oleg Gaidukevich has announced he is running in the October election and told First News Channel that “there must be healthy competition, debate”.

Sergej Sirankov, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, will also be on the ballot.

Anna Kanapatskaya, a former member of parliament who last contested the 2020 presidential election, will compete, and Alexander Khizhnyak, chairman of the Republican Labor Party, is the final candidate.

However, Tatsiana Chulitskaya, a Belarusian academic at Vilnius University in Lithuania, told the Reuters news agency that the four candidates did not criticize Lukashenko during their campaigns.

“These are not candidates in the normal sense of the word. They are just playing in this campaign. They are not competing with Lukashenko,” she said in a telephone interview.

What happened in 2020?

After the August election, the Central Election Commission announced that Lukashenko had been re-elected and had won 80.1 percent of the vote, securing victory over opposition candidate Tsikhanouska.

However, allegations of election fraud spread like wildfire after some claimed polling station counts did not match the CEC’s official tally, leading opposition groups and Western governments to accuse Lukashenko of stealing the election.

The election results sparked largely peaceful mass protests in Minsk, calling for Lukashenko to step down.

But protesters have been met with an intense police crackdown and mass arrests, and the Belarusian human rights group Viasna reported this week that more than 3,270 people were convicted for joining the 2020 protests.

Moreover, the group found that there are more than 1,200 political prisoners in the country. Lukashenko released 23 political prisoners last week, which the state media called a humanitarian gesture, apparently timed to coincide with the last days before the elections.

Did the election cause negative reactions?

Tsikhanouskaya called on the West to reject X’s “illegitimate” election.

She told BBC News that the election was a “fraud”, adding: “This is a military-style operation; a show staged by the regime to hang on to power.”

But Tsikhanowskaya told Belarusians not to protest as they did in the last election, saying: “You have to guard yourself until the real moment of opportunity.”

At the same time, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Wednesday rejecting the election results.

“Reiterating their non-recognition of Mr. Lukashenko as president and their position that the entire Belarusian regime is illegitimate, the members of the European Parliament express their unwavering support for the Belarusian people in their pursuit of democracy, freedom and human rights,” the European Parliament said. read.

Last week, former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said elections could not be free or fair in “an environment where censorship is pervasive and independent media no longer exist”.

He added that the US condemns the Belarusian government’s attempts to “legitimize” the elections.