Belarus’ President Was Re-Elected In A Landslide For The Seventh Time In An Election Labeled A “Sham”
Belarus' election committeed said Aleksander Lukashenko, nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator”, won with 86.8% of the votes in the latest election.
Alexander Lukashenko has won his seventh presidential election, extending his more than 31 years of authoritarian rule in Belarus for another five years.
Lukashenko, nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator”, first came into power in 1994 and has since pushed Belarus into authoritarianism, concentrating power and suppressing opposition.
During the previous elections in 2020, Lukashenko’s government cracked down on peaceful demonstrators protesting the rigged results.
Since then, he has jailed all of the country’s prominent opposition figures and forced many activists to flee.
On Sunday, Jan. 28, Belarus’ election committee said Lukashenko had won with 86.8% of the votes in the latest election.
The 70-year-old politician had run against four other candidates, but none presented real opposition since the government has either arrested or forced exiled most opposition leaders.
No independent observers monitored the elections.
Lukashenko said in a news conference on Sunday that he had not forced opposition figures out of the country and that they chose to go to prison or exile themselves.
“Some chose prison, some chose 'exile', as you say. We didn't kick anyone out of the country,” he said.
He said that he didn’t prevent anyone from speaking out, but prison was "for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law".
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a prominent woman opposition leader who challenged Lukashenko in the 2020 election and was exiled, called the latest vote "a senseless farce" and a “ritual for dictators,” AP reported.
The EU and US also called it a “sham” election and said it was “neither free nor fair”.
“The people of Belarus had no choice. It is a bitter day for all those who long for freedom and democracy,” Germany’s foreign minister said, according to the Guardian.
Russia, one of Lukashenko’s biggest allies, China, Venezuela and Pakistan have congratulated Lukashenko on his victory, according to the BBC.
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Wendy Chuang
Kassy Cho
