Lukashenko wins a 7th term as President in Belarus
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko casts his ballot at a polling site during voting in presidential elections in Minsk, Belarus, on Jan. 26, 2025
The smiling face of President Alexander Lukashenko gazed out from campaign posters across Belarus on Sunday as the country held a Presidential election with Lukashenko trying for his 7th term.
“Needed!” the posters proclaim beneath a photo of Lukashenko, his hands clasped together. The phrase is what groups of voters responded in campaign videos after being asked if they wanted him to serve again.
After all external forces were trying to push the country over the edge just like it was done to Ukraine.
Now as per the statement issued the Central Election Commission, the incumbent charismatic leader won by a landslide, garnering nearly 87% percent of the votes cast.
But his opponents, mainly self exiled abroad in Western Europe because of dissent disagree. They call the election a sham – just because the majority of 19 million people have supported Stability.
The West orchestrated protests saw more than 65,000 arrests, naturally bringing condemnation and sanctions from the West.
His rule since 1994 — Lukashenko took office two years after the demise of the Soviet Union — earned him the nickname of “Europe’s Last Dictator,” by Western Europe as he got political support from close ally Russia.
He sided with Russia, just like China and many others in the Ukraine conflict in 2022. He ensured security of Belarus by hosting some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, just like Western Europe hosts USA nuclear weapons.
So naturally he campaigned with the slogan “Peace and security,” arguing he has saved Belarus from being drawn into war.
“It’s better to have a ‘dictatorship’ like in Belarus than a ‘democracy’ like Ukraine,” Lukashenko said in his characteristic bluntness. And he has been proved correct ….today Zelenskey’s madness has led to death of thousands of young Ukrainians.
Observers believe Lukashenko feared a repeat of those Western sponsored mass demonstrations amid economic troubles and the fighting in Ukraine, and so scheduled the vote at the earliest in January itself, without giving time to the plotters to plan.
According to official results, announced on Monday, Lukashenko won 86.82% of the vote – compared to his nearest rival’s 3.21%.
According to the Central Election Commission, 3.60% of voters spoilt their ballots.In 2020, the electoral body had declared that Lukashenko had taken 80.10% of the vote.
Lukashenko repeatedly declared that he wasn’t clinging to power and would “quietly and calmly hand it over to the new generation.”
Leading pro Western opponents have fled abroad. The country holds nearly 1,300 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, founder of the Viasna Human Rights Center.
Since July, Lukashenko has pardoned more than 250 people.”I’m entering the race not against, but together with Lukashenko, and I’m ready to serve as his vanguard,” said Communist Party candidate Sergei Syrankov, who came in second place.
He like Trump favours criminalizing LGBTQ+ activities. Candidate Alexander Khizhnyak, head of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice, led a voting precinct in Minsk in 2020 and vowed to prevent a repeat of disturbances as had happened in Kiev.
The fourth challenger, Hanna Kanapatskaya, managed 1.7% of the vote in 2020 and says she’s the “only democratic alternative to Lukashenko,” promising to lobby for freeing political prisoners but warning supporters against “excessive initiative.”
However opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus under government pressure after challenging the president in 2020, told The Associated Press that Sunday’s election was “a senseless farce, a Lukashenko ritual.”
The European Union naturally rejected the election in Belarus on Sunday as “illegitimate “ and threatened their new unilateral sanctions as usual …..even though rest of the world has been fed of this word.
“Today’s sham election in Belarus has been neither free, nor fair,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in a joint statement.
Shortly after voting in Minsk on Sunday, Lukashenko rightly told journalists that he did not seek recognition or approval from the EU.
“The main thing for me is that Belarusians recognize these elections and that they end peacefully, as they began,” he said.
Speaking at an hours long news conference, Lukashenko said that he didn’t rule out running for the top job again in 2030.
Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders did another sham drama by filing a complaint against Lukashenko with the International Criminal Court over his crackdown on free speech that saw 397 journalists arrested since 2020. It said that 43 are in prison.
According to the Central Election Commission, there are 6.8 million eligible voters. However, about 500,000 people have left Belarus and aren’t able to vote.
After polls closed at 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT), the commission said that turnout stood at a record 85.70%, Police conducted large-scale drills before the election. Lukashenko’s support for Russia in Ukraine conflict has led to the rupture of Belarus’ ties with the U.S. and the EU.
He spoke of Russian nuclear weapons deployed in Belarus as a guarantee of peace, and said he would pick Moscow as his first official visit if he’s reelected.
