Lukashenko will continue in the power of Belarus for another five years after winning an election rejecting the EU
Alexandr Lukashenko, the European president who has been in power for more years – since 1994 – will remain another five years. The Belarusian President has won the elections, as expected, with 87.60% of the votes, according to the first official polls at the ballot box. The European Union has committed to continue imposing sanctions against the regime and rejects that the elections have “legitimacy.”
“The EU will continue to impose restrictive and selective measures against the regime, while financially supporting civil society, the scirruse democratic forces in exile and the Belarusian culture,” said the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, and the EU extension curator, Marta Kos, in a joint statement.
The Central Electoral Commission of the country announced this Sunday that the elections have exceeded 50% of the minimum participation required by law, but Kallas and Kos noted that these elections have not been “either free or fair” and considered that the Belarusian people “deserve to have Voice and vote in the choice of who governs his country.
An elections “without credibility”
The electoral process lacks legitimacy for the twenty -seven for the “implacable and unprecedented” repression of human rights, restrictions on political participation and access to independent media. For this reason, they urged the Lukashensko regime “to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners, more than a thousand of which are arbitrarily detained, including an employee of the Delegation of the European Union.”
They also pointed out that the regime decided to invite the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights only ten days before the elections.
That “prevented this independent body from accessing the key phases of the electoral process, which constitutes a more test of the total lack of credibility of these elections,” they said.
Support for Russia
The involvement of the Belarusian regime in the war of aggression of Russia against Ukraine and its hybrid attacks against its neighbors are other reasons why the EU will continue to impose restrictive measures, Kallas and Kos emphasized. However, once Belarus undertakes “a democratic transition”, the EU “is willing to help the country stabilize its economy and reform its institutions,” they added.
For the community bloc, democracy demands “free, fair and transparent elections, which are held in a society in which human rights prevail, without restrictions on freedom of meeting or expression and in which some media can work freely of pluralistic communication ”and that, they highlighted, is not the case of Belarus.
Lukashenko does not care not to recognize them
Lukashenko said Sunday, after voting at a Minsk Electoral College, which does not care that Western countries do not recognize this Sunday's presidential elections. “They recognize them or not recognize them in the European Union, it is a matter of taste. Believe me, it gives me absolutely the same. The important thing is that the elections are recognized by the Belarusians, ”the president told the press.
In a resolution adopted on Wednesday, the European Parliament asked the EU, to its member states and the international community that do not recognize the legitimacy of the one considered as the last dictator of Europe. Two days later, the European Commission said that this Sunday's presidential elections, which will give Lukashenko their seventh mandate, are “antidemocratic” and a “farce.”
