Sunday’s election is about a seventh term in five years for Alexander Lukashenko, who has been described many times as “Europe’s last dictator”.
In today’s Belarus there is no free party system. Four more people have been allowed to stand in the presidential election, but they pose no real threat to 70-year-old Lukashenka, who has lived in the former Soviet state’s presidential palace since 1994. The dictator has dismissed the idea of election debates.
The election has been condemned in advance, by both the opposition as the European Parliament. Before the election, Lukashenka pardoned 32 political prisoners, but at the same time more dissidents were arrested.
“Don’t want people to sacrifice their freedom”
Opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya, who challenged Lukashenka in the election five years ago and now operates in exile, told the AFP news agency that Belarusians are terrified after four years of repression.
Tikhanovskaya has warned her compatriots to take to the streets in connection with the “pseudo-election”.
– I don’t want people to sacrifice their freedom for nothing now. I want the people to save themselves for the right moment, it will come and then they must be ready, she says.
The EU, Great Britain and the United States refuse to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate president of Belarus.
The West has time and again imposed sanctions on the country for its repression of the population and its support for Russia.
Belarus is barely half the size of Sweden and has a population of just over 9 million people.
After independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the country has remained closely tied to Russia.
Belarus has been ruled since 1994 by the authoritarian Aleksander Lukashenka, who has strengthened his power over the administration, media and courts over the years.
After the 2020 presidential election, Lukashenka once again declared himself the winner. According to the official figures, he received 80 percent of the vote, but the election result was condemned by the opposition and large parts of the outside world.
In the second half of 2020, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians protested in the streets. The widespread democracy movement was crushed with help from Russia.
Up to 300,000 fled as prominent opposition figures were forced to choose between leaving Belarus or being imprisoned. Opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaja is a prominent figure in a democratic coordination council that operates in exile, mainly from Lithuania and Poland.
Teacher and interpreter Tikhanovskaya took her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky’s place as Lukashenka’s political challenger in 2020, after he was arrested and banned from campaigning. The husband has been sentenced to 18 years in prison and is said to have had no contact with the family since 2023.
Sources: UN, Country guide, AFP, TT