Lukashenko Extends His Rule in Belarusian Vote Called Sham
(Bloomberg) -- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko extended his rule in a tightly-controlled vote where he faced no opposition and thatâs been called a âshamâ by the European Union.
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The incumbent received 86.8% of the popular vote, Chairman of the countryâs Central Election Commission Igor Karpenko said during a video briefing from Minsk early Monday.
Lukashenko, 70, cast his ballot in Minsk on Sunday morning. Heâs been in office since 1994 and is running for a seventh term while thousands of opponents in the former Soviet republic remain in prison or exile. Leading officials and much of the countryâs economy are subject to Western sanctions due to human rights violations and Lukashenkoâs assistance to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
Lukashenko allowed his ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to launch the 2022 invasion from Belarusian territory, even while declining to send his own troops into battle. Heâs also drawn ire from neighboring European Union states, including Poland, for orchestrating a refugee crisis on their borders, and claims to host tactical nuclear weapons for Russia.
On Sunday, Lukashenko said he had âno regretsâ about having allowed Russia to use his territory as a staging ground despite the carnage that the war has brought to the region.
GLOBAL INSIGHT: Moscowâs Grip on Belarus Will Only Get Tighter
The election shouldnât be seen as free and fair, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. She said the opposition movement wouldnât recognize the ballot, which she described as an âimitation, a farceâ and a âritual for Lukashenko.â
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Sunday on X that the election is a âshamâ and âa blatant affront to democracy.â
Tsikhanouskaya, a former teacher, shot to prominence five years ago when she stepped in to take the candidacy of her husband, who was jailed after announcing his presidential bid. The opposition, which rallied behind her, contested Lukashenkoâs claim of victory in 2020 and launched mass street protests.
The authoritiesâ repressive response to those demonstrations forced Tsikhanouskaya and thousands of other Belarusians to flee, particularly to neighboring Poland and Lithuania. More than 60,000 people were targeted in crackdowns in subsequent years, with more than 1,200 political prisoners still held in jail, according to the Belarusian human rights center Viasna.
Sundayâs election was the first presidential ballot since those events. Belarusian citizens living abroad are no longer allowed to cast votes.
At a press conference in Warsaw on Sunday, Tsikhanouskaya described the vote as ânot an election but a âspecial electoral operationâ enabling Lukashenko to usurp power.â
It was a reference to the âspecial military operation,â Moscowâs euphemism for its war in Ukraine, which was conceived as an effort lasting days or weeks and will soon hit the three-year mark. For the first time, she said, some states had declared before election day that they wouldnât recognize the results of the Belarusian vote.
Members of the Belarusian opposition protested in the Polish capital holding an effigy of Lukashenko and white-red-white flags, which have become a symbol of opposition to his rule.
The event was an important opportunity for Belarusians who donât have to fear for their safety to show âthat an important part of Belarusian society doesnât support this regimeâ or its âsham election,â Ales Lahviniec, a scholar at the Free Belarus University, a project of Polandâs University of Wroclaw, told Bloomberg News. âIf we donât believe in change, it will never happenâ he said.
(Updates with Lukashenko, Tsikhanouskaya comments from fourth paragraph.)
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