The European Union rejected the election in Belarus on Sunday as illegitimate and threatened new sanctions. Belarus held an orchestrated vote virtually guaranteed to give 70-year-old autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko another term on top of his three decades in power. "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, per the AP. "The relentless and unprecedented repression of human rights, restrictions to political participation and access to independent media in Belarus, have deprived the electoral process of any legitimacy," Kallas and Kos said.
They urged the Belarusian government to release political prisoners, estimating their number at more than 1,000, including an employee of the EU delegation in Belarus' capital, Minsk. Kallas and Kos said that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was unable to monitor the full electoral process. Indications of the meaninglessness of the voting include:
- Off the trail: Lukashenko said he was "too busy" to campaign. "I'm not following the election campaign. I've got no time," he said last week, per the BBC.
- Unrivaled: Lukashenko's four challengers on the ballot are all loyal to him, per the AP. "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 wants to rebuild monuments to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Oleg Gaidukevich of the Liberal Democratic Party urged the other candidates to "make Lukashenko's enemies nauseous."
- Mock election: Activists have proposed holding online meme elections giving voters a choice between Lukashenko and the meme coin BelDoge, a digital canine character. A clear victory by BelDoge would embarrass the dictator, they figure.
- Closed: Polling stations abroad were not open, per CNN, keeping 3.5 million or so citizens of Belarus from casting a ballot.
"What in the democratic world you call elections has nothing in common with this event in Belarus," said exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya last week, per the Washington Post. The West recognizes the exiled opposition leader as the real winner of the 2020 elections. "It's like a ritual for dictators reappointing themselves."
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