As expected, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenka was re-elected for a seventh term in Belarus‘s January 26 presidential election. According to the official results, the autocrat won 86.2 percent of the vote. Of his four rivals – all more or less close to the regime – none received more than 3.21 percent. The turnout was 85.7 percent.
Both the Belarusian opposition in exile and the member states of the European Union – with the notable exception of Hungary — contested the vote, which they described as “neither free nor democratic”. The EU denounced the “relentless and unprecedented level of repression” in the country, where human rights are flouted and press freedom is non-existent, which “deprived the electoral process of any legitimacy”.
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