Belarus votes in tightly controlled elections opposition have called a ‘farce’

Polls have opened in Belarus’s tightly controlled parliamentary and local elections that are expected to cement the rule of the country’s authoritarian leader, despite calls for a boycott from the opposition, which dismissed the balloting as a “senseless farce”.

Alexander Lukashenko, the president who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for nearly 30 years, has accused the west of trying to use the vote to undermine his government and “destabilise” the country of 9.5 million people.

Most candidates belong to the four officially registered parties: Belaya Rus, the Communist party, the Liberal Democratic party and the party of Labour and Justice. Those parties all support Lukashenko’s policies. About a dozen other parties were denied registration last year.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader who is in exile in neighbouring Lithuania after challenging Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, urged voters to boycott the elections.

“There are no people on the ballot who would offer real changes because the regime only has allowed puppets convenient for it to take part,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a video statement. “We are calling to boycott this senseless farce, to ignore this election without choice.”

Sunday’s balloting is the first election in Belarus since the contentious 2020 vote that handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office and triggered an unprecedented wave of mass demonstrations.

Protests continued throughout the country for months, bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. More than 35,000 people were arrested. Thousands were beaten in police custody, and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organisations were shut down and outlawed.

Lukashenko has relied on subsidies and political support from his main ally, Russia, to survive the protests. He allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

This year’s election takes place amid a relentless crackdown on dissent. More than 1,400 political prisoners remain behind bars, including leaders of opposition parties and the renowned human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2022.

The opposition has said the early balloting that began on Tuesday offers fertile ground for the vote to be manipulated, with ballot boxes unprotected for five days.

Election officials said on Sunday that more than 40% of the country’s voters cast ballots during early voting, from Tuesday to Saturday. Turnout stood at 43.64% by 9am on Sunday, an hour after polls formally opened, according to the Belarusian central election commission.

The Viasna Human Rights Centre said students, soldiers, teachers and other civil servants were forced to participate in early voting.

“Authorities are using all available means to ensure the result they need – from airing TV propaganda to forcing voters to cast ballots early,” saidPavel Sapelka, of Viasna. “Detentions, arrests and searches are taking place during the vote.”

Speaking during Tuesday’s meeting with top Belarusian law enforcement officials, Lukashenko alleged without offering evidence that western countries were pondering plans to stage a coup in the country or to try to seize power by force. He ordered police to beef up armed patrols across Belarus, declaring this was “the most important element of ensuring law and order”.

After the vote, Belarus is expected to form a new state body – the 1,200-seat All-Belarus Popular Assembly, which will include top officials, local legislators, union members, pro-government activists and others. It will have broad powers, including the authority to consider constitutional amendments and to appoint election officials and judges.

Lukashenko was believed a few years ago to be considering whether to lead the new body after stepping down, but his calculations have apparently changed, and he announced on Sunday that he would run for the presidency again next year.

“Tell [the opposition] that I will run. And the more difficult the situation, the more actively they will disturb our society … the more strain they put on you, myself and society, the sooner I will run in these elections,” he told state media reporters as he cast his ballot in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

For the first time, curtains were removed from voting booths at polling stations, and voters were banned from taking pictures of their ballots. During the 2020 election, activists encouraged voters to photograph their ballots in an attempt to prevent authorities from manipulating the vote in Lukashenko’s favour.

Belarusian state TV aired footage of the interior ministry’s drills in which police detained a purported offender who was photographing his ballot and others who created an artificial queue outside a polling station.