Belarus election panel says authoritarian leader Lukashenko on track for 6th term

Even before polling stations in Belarus had fully closed, the head of the country's election commission declared Sunday that fragmentary results showed authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko far ahead in his bid for a sixth consecutive term.

The announcement by Lidia Yermoshina that Lukashenko had garnered 82 per cent support in voting at hospitals and sanatoria in five regions was likely to exacerbate tensions with opposition supporters upset about the country's deteriorating economy, political repression and Lukashenko's cavalier brushoff of the coronavirus threat.

The presidential election pitted Lukashenko, who has held an iron grip on the ex-Soviet nation since 1994, against four others, and has generated the biggest opposition protests in years. Opposition supporters suspect election officials will manipulate the results of Sunday's vote to give the 65-year-old Lukashenko a sixth term.

Anti-government protests were expected later Sunday, and Lukashenko has made it clear he won't hesitate to put down any demonstrations.

Voter turnout was so high that some polling places in the capital of Minsk had to work past the planned closing time of 8 p.m. to accommodate voters who were waiting in long lines, Yermoshina said.

Her announcement of the partial results, which showed main opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya with about seven per cent of the vote, did not specify what proportion of the electorate was represented.

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Many democratic aspects of the presidential election appeared to be lacking Sunday. Two early rivals to Lukashenko were blocked from running in the race, and one had to flee the country with his children after warnings that he would be arrested. Tensions were high throughout the day as Lukashenko vowed to quash any protests, and at least eight opposition campaign staff were arrested. A top aide to Tsikhanouskaya fled the country in the afternoon.

Protests expected

In the evening, police set up checkpoints on the outskirts of Minsk and were examining residence permits, apparently aiming to stem any influx of protesters from other cities.

Lukashenko himself was defiant as he voted.

"If you provoke, you will get the same answer," he said. "Do you want to try to overthrow the government, break something, wound, offend and expect me or someone to kneel in front of you and kiss them and the sand onto which you wandered? This will not happen."

Tsikhanouskaya, the wife of a jailed opposition blogger, attracted highly visible support, a very unusual development in a country where opposition voices are generally suppressed. One of her rallies in Minsk was attended by an estimated 60,000 people.

Mindful of Belarus's long history of violent crackdowns on dissent — protesters were beaten after the 2010 election and six rival candidates arrested, three of whom were imprisoned for years — Tsikhanouskaya called for calm Sunday

"I hope that everything will be peaceful and that the police will not use force," she said after voting.

Tsikhanouskaya emerged as Lukashenko's main opponent after two other prominent opposition aspirants were denied places on the ballot. One was jailed for charges that he calls political and the other, an entrepreneur and former ambassador to the United States, Valery Tsepkalo, fled to Russia after warnings that he would be arrested and his children taken away.

Tsepkalo's wife, Veronika, became a top member of Tsikhanouskaya's campaign, but she, too, has now left the country, campaign spokesperson Anna Krasulina said Sunday.

Arrests of journalists, opposition

Eight members of Tsikhanouskaya's campaign staff were arrested Sunday and the campaign chief was arrested a day earlier.

Three journalists from Russia's independent TV station Dozhd were detained after being forced to the ground by plainclothes police Sunday afternoon. Maria Kolsenikova, a top associate of Tsikhanouskaya who had been briefly detained on Saturday night, told the station the journalists were seized shortly after interviewing her.

Some voters were defiant in the face of Lukashenko's vow not to tolerate any protests.

"There is no more fear. Belarusians will not be silent and will protest loudly," 24-year-old Tatiana Protasevich said at a Minsk polling place Sunday.

As polls opened, the country's central elections commission said more than 40 per cent of the electorate had cast ballots in early voting, a figure likely to heighten concerns about the potential for manipulation.

"For five nights nobody has guarded the ballot boxes, which gives the authorities a wide field for manoeuvrings," Veronika Tsepkalo told The Associated Press on Sunday, a few hours before leaving Belarus.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, whose assessments of elections are widely regarded as authoritative, was not invited to send observers to the vote.

Tsikhanouskaya had crisscrossed the country, tapping into public frustration with Lukashenko's swaggering response to the pandemic and the country's stagnating Soviet-style economy.

Coronavirus concerns

Belarus, a country of 9.5 million people, has reported more than 68,500 confirmed coronavirus cases and 580 deaths, but critics have accused authorities of manipulating the figures to downplay the death toll.

Lukashenko has dismissed the virus as "psychosis" and declined to order restrictions to block its spread. He announced last month that he had been infected but had no symptoms and recovered quickly, allegedly thanks to doing sports. He has defended his handling of the outbreak, saying that a lockdown would have doomed the nation's weakened economy.

Belarus has sustained a severe economic blow after its leading exports customer, Russia, went into a pandemic-induced recession and other foreign markets shrank. Before the coronavirus, the country's state-controlled economy already had been stalled for years, stoking public frustration.

Yet for some voters, Lukashenko's long, hard-line rule is in his favour.

"He is an experienced politician, not a housewife who appeared out of nowhere and muddied the waters," retiree Igor Rozhov said Sunday. "We need a strong hand that will not allow riots."

Belarusian authorities last week arrested 33 Russian military contractors and charged them with plans to stage "mass riots." The political opposition and many independent observers saw the arrests as an attempt to shore up Lukashenko's sagging public support.

The arrest of the Russians marked an unprecedented spike in tensions between Belarus and Russia.

When Russia and Belarus signed a union agreement in 1996, Lukashenko hoped to use it as a vehicle to eventually lead a unified state as the successor to Russia's ailing president, Boris Yeltsin. The tables turned after Vladimir Putin became Russian president in 2000, and the Belarusian leader began resisting what he saw as a Kremlin push for control over Belarus.