In the absence of an opposition tolerated in this former Soviet Republic, the President of Belarus Alexandre Loukachenko, who has directed the country with an iron fist since 1994, was re -elected for five years with 86.82 % of the votes, said the Commission Electoral of the country on Monday, according to the Russian state agency RIA Novosti. A victory praised by the Kremlin, and on the contrary criticized by the European Union, which questioned its legitimacy.
The electoral campaign which preceded the ballot was “a competition”, welcomed the commission, ensuring that he had observed “practically no violation” of the electoral process, while no opposition is tolerated in the country. Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, the opposition leader, which has been forced to exile and whose husband is imprisoned in the country, denounced since Warsaw “a farce”, qualifying the leader of “criminal” and demanding liberation of all political prisoners.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated his Belarusian counterpart, welcoming his “political authority”, according to his services. “Your convincing victory in the elections clearly testifies to your great political authority as well as the indisputable support of the population in the way followed by Belarus,” it is able to read in a message from the Russian leader, published on the Kremlin website.
“We watch them”
The EU and human rights NGOs also qualified this staging election, the head of European diplomacy Kaja Kallas believing on Saturday that Alexander Loukachenko had “no legitimacy”. “We have a brutal democracy in Belarus,” said the 70 -year -old president at a press conference in Minsk attended an AFP journalist, after having voted for this stake -naked election.
The manager acknowledged that the people who had participated in the major unpublished demonstrations against his power in 2020 had since been excluded from certain jobs, saying that they could request a grace if they recognized “that they were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 based for three decades on the all-powerful local KGB. “We have a complete file with all their photos”. On Sunday, only four handpicked candidates by the power served as a storage.
“For a free Belarus”
During his sixth term, Alexandre Loukachenko completely suffocated any dissent after the major demonstrations which had followed the presidential election of 2020. Supported by Moscow, he had then succeeded in consolidating his power with arrests, violence and long sentences in prison prison Aiming opponents, journalists, NGO employees and simple demonstrators.
According to the UN, more than 300,000 Belarusians, out of a population of nine million, have fled their country for political reasons, especially in neighboring Poland. The dissident votes were pushed to exile or in prison, the country with some 1,250 political prisoners, according to the human rights NGO Viasna. In Warsaw, around 1,000 people gathered on Sunday around Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, to denounce the insured re -election of the leader.
Many people wore masks and some refused to testify to AFP, invoking the fact that speaking to the media could attract trouble to their loved ones still present in Belarus.
“Belarus has long lived under a dictatorship where freedom of expression and elections are impossible,” said AFP Alexandre Soustchevski, a 25 -year -old photographer. He evokes “a great tragedy” for his country, but assures: “We will continue to fight for a free Belarus! For Ales, a 24 -year -old student who did not want to give his family name, Loukachenko is “an absolutely incompetent man, who only keeps his power thanks to the support of Russia”.
Since 2020, Alexandre Loukachenko has come closer to Vladimir Putin – whom he qualified on Sunday as “big brother” -, until his territory is made available to invade Ukraine in 2022. Questioned by AFP on D ‘ Possible regrets in view of the magnitude of the human assessment of the Russian invasion, he replied in a firm tone: “I don’t regret anything”.
Alliance with Putin
In Minsk, Irina Lebedeva, a 68 -year -old retiree, told AFP to have voted for him. “Thanks to our president, there is peace in the country,” she justifies. Nadejda Goujalovskaïa, 74, also voted for “Batka”, the “father” in Belarusian. But she recognizes lips as the subject is taboo: “Maybe everything is not perfect, that we are not in a democracy …”.
Faced with repression, the Westerners imposed heavy sanctions on Belarus, leading Alexandre Loukachenko to accelerate his rapprochement with the Kremlin. Illustration of this alliance, the Russian army deployed in Belarus in the summer of 2023 tactical nuclear weapons, a threat to kyiv but also for NATO members bordering the country (Lithuania, Latvia, Poland). Alexandre Loukachenko repeated on Sunday that she wanted to receive Russian ballistic missiles on his soil “Orechnik”.