Alexander Lukashenko set to win seventh presidential term in sham Belarus elections

The final day of voting in the Belarusian presidential election got under way on Sunday, with incumbent dictator Alexander Lukashenko already guaranteed to win a seventh consecutive term in office in elections that have already been dismissed as a sham by the international community.

Lukashenko, who has been in power for over 30 years, is running against four government-approved candidates — Aleh Haidukevich, Siarhei Syrankou, Hanna Konapatskaya, and Alyaksandr Khizhnyak — none of whom is critical of his record, let alone seen as a potential threat to his rule.

“We understand who will be the winner of this race, and we fully support it,” Syrankou, the candidate put forward by the Communist Party, said in an interview with Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Friday, while Haidukevich, leader of the country’s Liberal Democratic Party, joked that you didn’t “have to be Nostradamus” to see that Lukashenko would win the election.

Belarusians living abroad have been banned from voting at the country’s embassies and consulates, presumably to prevent the casting of protest votes by the thousands of Belarusians who were forced into exile following the police crackdown on anyone taking part in the mass protests against the rigged results of the country’s last election in 2020.

Internet disruptions have also been recorded in Belarus over the weekend, Zerkalo reported, with Belarusians unable to access a number of foreign-hosted websites including Reddit, and reportedly having trouble using several VPNs to access government-blocked websites.

In a speech on Saturday, Lukashenko pledged that Belarus would remain “a dictatorship of order, justice, kindness and respect”, according to state-owned agency BELTA. Lukashenko also described the 2020 anti-government protests as “an important and necessary inoculation” for the nation, and vowed that Belarus would “never repeat what happened”.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told CNBC on Thursday that the sole unpredictable element of the election would be how high Lukashenko’s share of the vote ended up being.

Advising Belarusians that ticking the “against all candidates” option on their ballot paper was the safest way to protest, Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020 before being forced to leave the country, urged Belarusians to remain safe and bide their time until “a real opportunity” for change came along.

The country’s exiled opposition has indicated that it did not expect another wave of protests following the election results due to the government’s violent crackdown on those who joined mass anti-government rallies following the results of the stolen 2020 election.

“This is not democracy; it’s a farce built on fear, repression and lies,” Tsikhanouskaya reminded her compatriots and the rest of the world on Friday evening.