TALLINN: President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus accused the West on Tuesday of attempting to incite protests during this month’s parliamentary and local elections to undermine his rule, while the country’s exiled opposition leader denounced the vote as a “cynical farce” and called for its boycott.
Lukashenko, who has governed Belarus for nearly three decades, alleged that the West would employ “new triggers to destabilize society” after the Feb. 25 vote.
Early voting commenced Tuesday in the tightly-controlled parliamentary and local elections, with only those aligned with Lukashenko’s political agenda allowed to participate. Most candidates hail from the four officially registered parties, all of which endorse Lukashenko’s policies: Belaya Rus, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the Party of Labor and Justice.
Belarus Opposition Leader Urges Boycott
This marks Belarus’s first election since the contentious 2020 presidential election, which saw Lukashenko secure his sixth term and sparked widespread protests.
The protests persisted for months, drawing hundreds of thousands to the streets. Over 35,000 individuals were arrested, thousands were subjected to violence in police custody, and hundreds of independent media outlets and NGOs were shut down and outlawed.
To weather the protests, Lukashenko relied on Russian subsidies and political backing. In February 2022, he permitted the Kremlin to deploy troops into Ukraine from Belarusian territory.
Against a backdrop of relentless dissent crackdown, this month’s election unfolds. Over 1,400 political prisoners, including opposition party leaders and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, remain incarcerated.
On Tuesday, the Viasna human rights center reported the death of Ihar Lednik, a leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party, in prison at the age of 64. Lednik, serving a three-year sentence for slandering Lukashenko, succumbed to cardiac arrest following surgery in prison.
