Belarusian authorities announced on Monday the preliminary results of legislative and local elections, in which only candidates loyal to the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko were allowed to participate.
Unsurprisingly, the vote, described as a “senseless farce” by the opposition leader, further consolidated the 30 years of reign of the President of Belarus who also declared on Sunday his intention to run for office. new five-year term in next year’s presidential election.
In detail, most of the candidates belonged to the four officially registered parties: Belaya Rus, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Party of Labor and Justice.
The Central Election Commission stated that 73% of the country’s 6.9 million eligible voters cast ballotsoccupying all 110 seats in the national parliament and 12,514 seats in local councils.
Sunday’s vote was the first since the controversial 2020 vote that sparked a unprecedented wave of demonstrations in the country and which resulted in more than 35,000 people arrested by opponents.
Monday, Vladimir Poutine congratulated his counterpart for “the confident victory of the patriotic forces of Belarus” which contributed “to ensuring the internal political stability“.
Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, in exile in neighboring Lithuania, had called for boycott.
The US State Department called Sunday’s vote a sham.with spokesperson Matthew Miller emphasizing that it took place “in a climate of fear in which no electoral process can be described as democratic.”
The local authorities also refused, for the first time, to invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the vote.