Pylaria presidential elections: Who will face Lukashenko, does it matter? | Election news

The Belarusians vote in presidential elections on Sunday, as President Alexander Lukashenko seeks to authorize the seventh rule.

Over the past thirty years, Lukashenko, 70 years old, has been called many analysts as “the last” European dictator “, on the country with an iron grip, and crushed all opposition and votes against it.

“To be honest, I do not follow it. I simply do not have a time for that,” the president, who did not participate in an electoral campaign on this tour.

But after the last elections in 2020, when the winning leader announced despite reports of popular anger against him, mass protests erupted. The opposition and the West claimed that his victory was fraudulent and theft of the Sviatlaana Tsikhanouskaya candidate, who was forced to flee the country.

Now, with his political opponents, either prison or exile, its success is believed on Sunday is widely guaranteed.

The elections were initially planned for the month of August, but were transferred to the deep winter. There was a reason, the Belarusian political analyst Valerie Carpalvich told Associated Press: “There will be no mass protests in the freezing of January.”

Here is what you need to know about the elections:

When will the polling cards open?

Opinion polls were opened throughout the country at 8 am (05:00 GMT) and remains open until 8 pm (17:00 GMT).

Bearus is working on a simple majority system, where citizens vote for the head of state and the legislature every five years.

The Belarusians, over the age of 18, will be able to participate.

The election results are expected to be known by February 5, and the second round will occur, if necessary, on February 12.

How many people are expected to vote?

The BELTA news agency reported on Friday that three days after the early vote, the participation rate reached 27.15 percent.

BELTA reported last week that in a poll conducted in December, who conducted an interview with 1500 people, 85.5 percent of registered voters indicated that they would vote in the upcoming elections.

According to Statistica, a platform for data collection, approximately 84 percent of qualified voters made the polls in the presidential elections in August 2020.

He added that the capital, Minsk, recorded the lowest demand for voters in “more than 66 percent.”

However, the Belarusians abroad will only be able to participate in the elections by returning to the country and throwing polling at the regional polling station.

Who runs against Lukashenko?

According to the Central Elections Committee (CEC), four candidates for candidacy were registered in the Sunday elections.

The President of Liberal Democrats Oleg Jaidivic announced that he was running in the elections in October and told the first news channel that “there should be healthy competition and discussion.”

Sergey Sierrakov, the first secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, will also be in voting.

Anna Kanabatkia, a former member of Parliament who was running last time in the 2020 presidential elections, will run, and Alexander Khadnak, head of the Republican Labor Party, will be the last candidate.

However, Tatsana Choleteskaya, a Belarusian Academy at the University of Venensus at Lithuania, told Reuters that the four candidates did not criticize Lukashenko during their campaign.

“These are not candidates in the natural sense of this word. They only play in this campaign. She said in an interview over the phone:” They do not compete with Lukashenko. “

What happened in 2020?

In the aftermath of the August elections, CEC announced that Lukashenko has been re -elected and won 80.1 percent of the vote, obtaining his victory over the opposition candidate, Tskhanskaya.

However, voter fraud, such as huge, spread after some argued that the charges by the polling stations did not add to the official count by CEC, which led to the opposition groups and Western governments accusing Lukashenko of stealing the elections.

Because of the election results, peaceful mass protests erupted largely in Minsk, and called for Lukashenko to step down.

However, the demonstrators were met with an intense police repression and mass arrest, as the Belarusian Human Rights Group informed us this week. More than 3,270 people They were convicted of joining the 2020 protests.

Moreover, the group found that there is more than one 1200 political prisoners In the country. Lukashenko launched 23 political prisoners last week in the government media referred to as a humanitarian gesture, and it seems timing with the last days before the elections.

Did the elections receive any violent reaction?

Tsikhanouskaya called to the West to reject “illegal” elections on X.

BBC News told the elections a “hoax”, adding, “This is a military -style operation; the regime’s performance to adhere to power.”

But Tskhanoskaya told Belarus not to protest as they did in the last elections, saying: “You have to remain safe until the moment of real possibility.”

At the same time, the European Parliament approved a decision on Wednesday to reject the election results.

“With the repetition of their lack of awareness of Mr. Lukashenko as president and their position that the entire Belarusian regime is illegal, members of the European Parliament express their steadfast support for the Belarusian people in their endeavor to democracy, freedom and human rights,” a statement from the European Parliament reads.

Last week, former US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the elections could not be free or fair in “an environment where censorship is everywhere and independent media no longer exists.”

He added that the United States condemned the attempts of the Belarusian government to “add legitimacy” the elections.