Belarus strongman Lukashenko secures 7th term with 87.6% of votes: Exit poll

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was on track to win a seventh five-year term with 87.6% of the vote in Sunday’s election, according to an exit poll broadcast on state television.

Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has led the country since 1994. The United States and the European Union both said in the run-up to the election that it could not be free and fair because independent media are banned in Belarus and all leading opposition figures have been jailed or forced to flee abroad.

The electoral commission said turnout was 81.5% in the election, in which 6.9 million people were eligible to vote.

Fearing a repeat of election unrest

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.

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“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.”

With inputs from agencies