The last time Belarusians voted in a presidential election, in August 2020, an unprecedented fervor gripped the country. For the first time since Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994, they saw hope for change with the candidacy of Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya, who had replaced at short notice her husband, the blogger Sergei Tsikhanovski, imprisoned for the countryside.
Winner of a rigged election, the autocrat is still in power four and a half years later. The tens of thousands of demonstrators in the summer of 2020, who took to the streets to denounce fraud, were brutally repressed. The political opposition was imprisoned or forced into exile, civil society was crushed, and terror became the rule in this former Soviet republic. of nine million inhabitants. The repression was further strengthened after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which dragged Belarus, a key ally of Moscow, into cobelligerency.
In this dark context Belarusians are once again called to participate in a presidential election, Sunday January 26. Alexander Lukashenko, 70, is seeking a seventh term against four candidates who all publicly support his regime. The vote will take place in the absence of international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Its outcome is beyond doubt. It should grant a new victory to the authoritarian leader, who owes his political survival to Vladimir Putin.
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