Alexandre Loukachenko, a great ally of Vladimir Putin, was re -elected this Sunday, January 26 at the head of Belarus. He collected, according to an official survey at the exit of the ballot boxes, 87.6 % of the votes in a without suspense election, completely locked, since the power has sorted the four candidates authorized to participate. During his sixth mandate, the 70 -year -old autocrat, who directed this former Soviet Republic with an iron fist since 1994, completely suffocated any dissent after unprecedented demonstrations having targeted it in 2020.
The opposition in exile, including his svetlana tikhanovskaïa thread chief, denounced “a farce”. The European Union and human rights NGOs had also qualified, even before its outcome, this staging election. The European Union “will continue to impose restrictive and targeted measures against the” Alexandre Loukachenko regime after the “masquerade” that constitutes this presidential election, underlined the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas.
“Electoral process of all legitimacy”
“Democracy requires free, fair and transparent elections […] This is not the case in Belarus, “she said in a statement.” The incessant and unprecedented repression of human rights, restrictions on political participation and access to the independent media have Private the electoral process of all legitimacy, “added Kaja Kallas.
“We have a brutal Democracy in Belarusian,” admitted Alexandre Loukachenko at a press conference in Minsk attended by an AFP journalist, after having voted. The leader acknowledged that the people who had participated in the major unpublished demonstrations against his power in 2020 had since been excluded from certain jobs, saying that they could request a grace if they recognized “that they were wrong”. “We will not continue everyone, but we are watching them,” he warned, when he has been leaning for three decades on the all-powerful local KGB. “We have a complete file with all their photos.”