MINSK: Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko called opposition leaders “cowards” after they urged people to go mushrooming rather than vote in an election set to reinforce the hardline leader’s grip on the ex-Soviet country.
“They are cowards who have nothing to say to the people,” Lukashenko, a populist who has run the country of 9.5 million with an iron fist since 1994, told journalists after voting at a Minsk polling station where an orchestra turned out to play.
The two main opposition parties see the election as a sham exercise to produce a 110-seat chamber which largely rubber-stamps Lukashenko’s directives.
Opposition parties, the United Civic Party and the Belarussian People’s Front, said anyone voting would be casting a ballot for his leadership as a whole and would be validating the detention of political prisoners and election fraud.
But students, armed service staff and police voting had already produced a 26 percent turnout, official figures showed, and there was no question of the boycott threatening the overall turnout threshold and the validity of yesterday’s ballot.
The outcome will enable Lukashenko to present the election as a genuine democratic process. Western monitoring agencies have not judged an election in Belarus free and fair since 1995.
Defending his 18-year-long rule and intolerance of dissent, the former Soviet state farm boss said yesterday: “We don’t need revolutions and shake-ups.”
Reuters
