Belarus (TIP): The smiling face of President Alexander Lukashenko gazed out from campaign posters across Belarus on January 26 as the country held an orchestrated election virtually guaranteed to give the 70-year-old autocrat yet another term on top of his three decades in power.
“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 supposedly being asked if they wanted him to serve again.
But his opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad by his unrelenting crackdown on dissent and free speech, would disagree. They call the election a sham—much like the last one in 2020 that triggered months of protests that were unprecedented in the history of the country of 9 million people.
The crackdown saw more than 65,000 arrests, with thousands beaten, bringing condemnation and sanctions from the West. His iron-fisted rule since 1994—Lukashenko took office two years after the demise of the Soviet Union—earned him the nickname of “Europe’s Last Dictator,” relying on subsidies and political support from close ally Russia.
He let Moscow use his territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and even hosts some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, but he still 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.
His reliance on support from Russian President Vladimir Putin—himself in office for a quarter-century—helped him survive the 2020 protests.
Observers believe Lukashenko feared a repeat of those mass demonstrations amid economic troubles and the fighting in Ukraine, and so scheduled the vote in January, when few would want to fill the streets again, rather than in August. He faces only token opposition.
“The trauma of the 2020 protests was so deep that Lukashenko this time decided not to take risks and opted for the most reliable option when balloting looks more like a special operation to retain power than an election,” Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich said.
Lukashenko repeatedly declared that he wasn’t clinging to power and would “quietly and calmly hand it over to the new generation.”
His 20-year-old son, Nikolai, traveled the country, giving interviews, signing autographs and playing piano at campaign events. His father hasn’t mentioned his health, even though he was seen having difficulty walking and occasionally spoke in a hoarse voice. (AP)