Belarus’ Lukashenko eyes seventh mandate

Belarus’ Lukashenko eyes seventh mandate

MINSK
Belarus’ Lukashenko eyes seventh mandate

Belarusians vote on Jan. 26 in a presidential election to extend Alexander Lukashenko's 30-year stranglehold on power in which he has crushed all opposition and helped his ally Russia invade Ukraine.

The mustachioed 70-year-old is running for a seventh mandate as head of the former Soviet republic, which borders the European Union, Ukraine and Russia, in what the opposition has already branded a "sham."

The European Parliament has called on the international community not to recognize the result.

The previous vote in 2020 was followed by an extensive crackdown on unprecedented mass protests.

In an interview with AFP ahead of the election, opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020, said Belarusians were "really frightened by four years of repression."

Since 1994, Lukashenko has crushed several waves of protest against his rule. The last and most serious began in August 2020 and lasted for months.

Tens of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets.

Supported by Russia's Vladimir Putin, a shaken Lukashenko went on to consolidate his power with arrests, long prison sentences against opponents, journalists, activists and ordinary protesters.

The United Nations estimates that more than 300,000 Belarusians out of a population of 9 million fled the country for political reasons, mainly to Poland.

To punish this repression, Western powers have imposed heavy sanctions against Belarus, leading Lukashenko to strengthen his alliance with the Kremlin and drop his long-standing balancing act between Moscow and the West.