The smiling face of President Alexander Lukashenko was on Sunday's pre-election posters when organized elections were held in the country, which was practically guaranteed another period of 30 years of autocracy.
“It is necessary.” Wallpapers signal under Lukashenko's photo, hands pressed together. The phrase is what voters' groups responded in the campaign videos after they were supposed to ask if they wanted him to serve again.
But his opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled to abroad because of his relentless pressure against his free speech. They call the elections a fake, which is very similar to the last 2020, which has been protesting for months, who were unprecedented in the history of nine million countries.
As a result of the pressure, more than 65,000 people were arrested, and thousands of people were beaten, which condemned and imposed sanctions on the West.
The European Union (EU) has rejected the election as illegitimate and threatened with new sanctions, the State Television report states that Lukashenko will win by the seventh five-year period, receiving 87.6 percent of the vote.
“False elections in Belarus today were not free, not fair,” said Kaja Kalas, EU Commissioner for EU Commissioner Marta Kos in a joint statement.
Since 1994, Lukashenko's iron fist, which he assumed two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to the “Last Dictator” of Europe on Russia's Subsidies and Political Support.
He allowed Moscow to use its territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and even hosted some of Russia's tactical nuclear weapons, claiming that it had rescued Belarus to be involved in war.
“It is better to have a dictatorship like Belarus than such democracy in Ukraine,” Lukashenko said with rudeness.
His hope on the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he served for a quarter of a century, helped him survive the protests of 2020.
Observers believe that Lukashenko was afraid of recurrence of these mass protests in the background of economic trouble and fights, and thus voted in January, when few would like to fill the streets, not in August. He only faces a symbolic opposition.
“The traumatic of the 2020 protests that Lukashenko decided not to take risks and chose the most reliable version when voting is more like a special operation than elections,” said Belarusian political analyst Valeri Carbalevich.
Lukashenko has repeatedly stated that it is not clung to the government and it will “rest calm and calmly with the new generation.”
His 20-year-old son, Nikolai, toured the country, giving interviews during pre-election events, giving signatures and playing the piano. The father did not mention his health, although he had seen it difficult to walk and sometimes speaks of a hoarse voice.
“Lukashenko has launched an active campaign, despite obvious health problems, and that means that he still has a lot of energy,” said Carbalich. “The next issue is becoming relevant only when the leader is going to leave. But Lukashenko is not going to leave. “
Leading opponents have fled abroad or thrown into prison. About 1,300 political prisoners are kept in the country, including the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the founder of Viasna Human Rights Center.
Since July, Lukashenko has pardoned more than 250 people qualified by activists as political prisoners. At the same time, however, the authorities have stricted to eradicate dissent, arresting hundreds of invasions to relatives and friends of political prisoners, as well as participants in online events organized by residential buildings.
Last month, the authorities arrested 188 people last month, Viaazan said. The human rights activists say that the activists and those who donated money to the opposition groups were called to the police and force them to sign papers, which stated that they were warned of participating in unauthorized protests.
All of Lukashenko's four opposites are faithful to him, praising his authority.
“I am not fighting against him, but with Lukashenko, and I am ready to serve as his avant-garde,” said the Communist Party candidate Sergey Sirankov, who is in favor of reconstruction of the monuments of the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin.
The leader of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice Alexander Khizchi in 2020 headed the polling station in Minsk and promised to prevent the “recurrence of riots.”
Oleg Gaydukevich, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, supported Lukashenko in 2020 and urged his colleagues to “cause nausea enemies to enemies Lukashenko.”
The fourth opponent, Hannah Kannavarka, actually received 1.7 percent of the vote in 2020 and said that he was “the only democratic alternative to Lukashenko, promising to lobby to supporters” against the “excessive initiative.”
Opposition leader Svatlana Circule, who escaped from Belarus in 2020, told the Associated Press that the elections on Sunday were “foolish farce, Lukashenko's ritual.”
Voters should be crucified on the ballot, he said, and world leaders should not recognize the result of a country, “where all independent media and opposition parties have been destroyed, and the prisons are filled with political prisoners.”
“Repressions have become even more cruel, as he approached without election voting, but Lukashenko behaves as if hundreds of thousands still standing out of his palace,” he said.
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Journalists Without Borders have filed a complaint against Lukashenko due to its pressure on freedom of speech, as a result of which 397 journalists have been arrested since 2020. According to him, 43 are in prison.
According to the Central Electoral Commission, 6.8 million eligible voters have been elected. However, about 500,000 people left Belarus and could not vote.
The polling stations were removed by the veils covering the ballot boxes, and the voters were not allowed to photograph their ballots in 2020 to make such pictures for the opposition to make the voting for the authorities difficult to falsifying the voting for the authorities.
Before the election, the police held large-scale military exercises. The video of the Ministry of Internal Affairs shows that the police beat their shields with the helmets as a way to prepare the protest. Another officer was arrested by a man who had appeared as a voter, twisting his hand near the ballot box.
Initially, Belarus refused to allow observers to monitor the European Security and Cooperation Organization, which monitored the previous elections. It changed the course this month and invited the OSCE to hold a late observation mission.
Lukashenko's support for the Ukrainian war has led to the breakdown of Belarus' relations with the United States and the European Union, ending the West to get more subsidies to its gaming from the Kremlin.
“Until 2020, Lukashenko could play and play against the West against Russia, but now when Belarus' status is close to Russia's elections to the Belarusian leader with the Kremlin, reducing the connection,” he said. Artyom Schryibman, Belarusian, Belarusian Center for Russia and Eurasia.
After the elections, Lukashenko can try to weaken its complete dependence on Russia, seeking the West again, he predicted it.
“Lukashenko's interim goal is to use the elections to establish its legitimacy and try to overcome its isolation to at least talk to the West on the weakening of sanctions,” said Schraibman.
The early sign of Minsk's desire to cooperate with the West was on Sunday, when US Secretary of State Marco Rubion X stated that Belarus was “unilateral” released US citizen Anastasia Nuhfer.
It was surprised by the public and even Belarusians. His name was not publicly published and was not included in the lists of political prisoners.
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