Belarus: Lukashenko re-elected without opposition for a 7th term

The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, 70, was re-elected on Sunday for five years with 87.6% of the votes, according to an official exit poll, due to a lack of tolerated opposition in this former Soviet republic that he has ruled with an iron fist since 1994. On Sunday, only four candidates hand-picked by those in power acted as foils.

Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, forced into exile and whose husband is imprisoned in the country, for her part denounced from Warsaw “a farce”, describing the leader as a “criminal” and demanding the release of all political prisoners. The EU and human rights NGOs also described this election as staged, with the head of European diplomacy Kaja Kallas estimating on Saturday that Lukashenko had “no legitimacy”.

The leader acknowledged that people who participated in large, unprecedented protests against his power in 2020 had since been excluded from certain jobs, saying they could request a pardon if they recognized “that they were wrong”. “We will not pursue everyone, but we monitor them,” he warned, even though he has relied for three decades on the all-powerful local KGB. “We have a complete file with all their photos.”

During his sixth term, Alexander Lukashenko completely stifled any dissent after the major demonstrations which followed the 2020 presidential election. Supported by Moscow, he then managed to consolidate his power with arrests, violence and long prison sentences. targeting opponents, journalists, NGO employees and simple demonstrators. According to the UN, more than 300,000 Belarusians, out of a population of nine million, have fled their country for political reasons, particularly to neighboring Poland.

In Warsaw, around 1,000 people gathered around Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Sunday to denounce the leader’s assured re-election. Many people wore masks and some refused to testify, citing that speaking to the media could get their loved ones still in Belarus in trouble.

“Belarus has lived for a long time under a dictatorship where freedom of expression and elections are impossible,” declared Alexander Suchevsky, a 25-year-old photographer. He evokes “a great tragedy” for his country, but assures: “We will continue to fight for a free Belarus!”

Since 2020, Alexander Lukashenko has grown closer to Vladimir Putin, whom he described on Sunday as “big brother”, to the point of making his territory available to invade Ukraine in 2022. Asked about possible regrets in view of the scale of the human toll of the Russian invasion, he replied in a firm tone: “I regret nothing.”

Faced with repression, the West imposed heavy sanctions on Belarus, leading Alexander Lukashenko to accelerate his rapprochement with the Kremlin. Illustration of this alliance, the Russian army deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus in the summer of 2023, a threat for kyiv but also for the NATO members bordering the country (Lithuania, Latvia, Poland).

Lukashenko repeated on Sunday that he wanted to receive Russian intermediate-range “Orechnik” ballistic missiles on his soil. Human rights organizations estimate that the country still has more than 1,200 political prisoners held in difficult conditions.