The longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko is ready to win the seventh time as he is contesting the real challengers’ elections.
Polling is underway for the presidential election in Belarus, in which late leader Alexander Lukashenko is expected to spend more than three decades in his power in the absence of a real opposition.
After Lukashenko crushed mass protests against his government in 2020 and allowing Russia to use Belarusian soil to attack Ukraine in 2022, local time on Sunday 8am (05:00 GMT) Voters started voting.
The 70 -year -old former collective form boss has been in power in Belarus since 1994 and has been striving for the seventh term.
In 2020, the country’s last presidential election ended with nationwide demonstrations, which is not exemplified in the country’s history of 90 million population. Opposition and Western countries accused Lukashenko of rigging and imposed sanctions.
In response, his government launched a massive crackdown, which imprisoned more than 1,000 people, including the Nobel Peace Prize -winning Alice Beaski, the founder of the Vyasana Human Rights Center.
The UN estimates that about 300,000 Belarusian countries have left the country since 2020 – mostly Poland and Lithuania. They will not be able to vote, as Belarus has ended voting abroad.
“All our opponents and enemies should be understood: Don’t hope, we will never repeat what was in 2020,” Lukashenko said during a ceremony at a stadium in Minsk on Friday.
Reporting from a polling center in the capital Minsk, Bernard Smith of Al Jazeera said that the voting lead was lacking both enthusiasm and campaign.
“Lukashenko itself has said that he is very busy running the country to run the campaign,” he said, it was difficult to guess the mood in the country because people were not ready to talk openly.
“There [appears to be] There is no hunger to protest because people know they are in danger of being arrested – and even opposition groups abroad have said that it is no longer time to protest, “Smith said.
Nevertheless, Smith noted that the authorities had largely allowed the foreign press to cover the elections – it is a potential sign that Lukashenko might “want to try to improve relations with the West”.
“He is probably seeing that there may be a peace deal at the end of the year. [between Russia and] Smith added that Ukraine and he want to give Belarus a position for what happens after that… and what the Belarus can play.
‘The last dictator of Europe’
Lukashenko’s hands -on rule, which began two years after the Soviet Union’s demolition, won the title “Last dictator of Europe” – which he adopts – subsidized and political support from a close ally Russia. Depending on.
Four candidates who have contested against Lukashenko have been selected to give the elections the air of democracy and very few people know who they are. They are loyal to him and praise his government.
“I am joining the race with Lukashenko, not against it, and I am ready to work as his squad,” the Communist Party candidate Sergei Sarikov said, “the Communist Party candidate Sergey Serinidov said, which supports LGBTQ’s activities and supports the construction of monuments of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
The head of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice, Alexander Khazniak, led a voting constituency in Minsk in 2020 and promised that “malfunction” would be stopped.
The head of the Liberal Democratic Party, Olegg Gedovich, supported Lukashenko in 2020 and called on fellow candidates to “make Lukashenko’s enemies nausea”.
The fourth challenge, Hannah Kantaskaya, won 1.7 percent of the vote in 2020, saying that he was the “only democratic alternative to Lukashenko”, which promises to lobby for the release of political prisoners, but supporters “excessive action” Warning against.
In a post on the X, the European Union’s top diplomat, calling the election a “fraud”, said “Lukashenko has no justification”.
