Demand for new election after Belarus vote 'farce'
Belarus’ main opposition candidate demanded a new vote today as President Alexander Lukashenko stormed to victory by a massive margin.
Thousands of supporters jammed a main square in central Minsk, heeding, Alexander Milinkevich’s persistent calls for a peaceful protest after polls closed across the nation of 10 million.
According to a nearly-complete preliminary count, Lukashenko, 51, had 82.6% of the presidential vote compared with 6% for Milinkevich, Central Election Commission chief Lidiya Yermoshina said, awarding a third term for the authoritarian leader who has ruled the ex-Soviet republic since 1994.
Turnout was 92.6%, the commission said.
Milinkevich supporters defied a ban on election day rallies and massed in a bitter wind on Oktyabrskaya Square with shouts of “Freedom!” and “Milinkevich!” Some waved colourful light wands or flags.
“We demand new, honest elections,” Milinkevich told the crowd through a small bullhorn. “This was a complete farce.”
Although snow had fallen sporadically all day, a squall that kicked up during the rally was suspected by many of being a police action – the snow was of a different texture than the previous flakes and it began blowing suddenly from a different direction, ending as abruptly as it began after about 10 minutes.
Milinkevich called on his supporters to return to the square tonight to continue their protest – signalling a bid to hold a sustained protest of the sort that has brought opposition leaders to power in former Soviet republics including Ukraine and Georgia in recent years.
Fears of violent confrontation had mounted, with Milinkevich calling for the protests and officials saying they were banned on election day. But the authorities held back.
The crowd was the biggest the opposition had mustered in years, reaching at least 10,000, according to AP reporters’ estimates, before it started thinning out. After about three hours, a smaller group marched to nearby Victory Square, some laying red, blue and white carnations at a monument there.
Alexander Kozulin, another opposition candidate, demanded that authorities release what he said were hundreds of opposition activists detained during the campaign.
At Oktyabrskaya Square, demonstrators waved a national flag that Lukashenko had scrapped in favour of a Soviet-style replacement, as well as EU flags. At one point, a trolley bus went by with a young man riding on the roof. He pumped his fist in a victory sign, and the crowd roared when he rode off carrying a national flag someone thrust into his hands.
People blew horns and shouted “Mi-lin-ke-vich!” – echoing the much larger crowds on Kiev’s Independence Square in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which has inspired the opposition in neighbouring Belarus.
“I came here to find out the real results of the election,” said Veronika Danilyuk, 19, a student who said she had voted for Milinkevich. “I believe that he is the only one who can guarantee freedom and fairness to our country.”
“The Belarusian mentality is to sit home and watch their stupid state TV,” said another protester. “I came to hear a brave man speak.”
Police made no move to disperse the crowd, although they closely guarded the building facing the square that temporarily housed the election commission. About a dozen identical unmarked white buses, filled with riot police behind drawn curtains, idled on a nearby side-street.
Lukashenko has vowed to prevent the kind of mass rallies that helped bring opposition leaders to power in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan following disputed elections, raising the threat of a forceful government response.
The use or threat of force neutralised opposition efforts to protest against vote results in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan last year, and a bloody government crackdown in Uzbekistan left hundreds dead.
Ahead of the vote, the government mounted a campaign of threats and allegations of violent, foreign-backed overthrow plots that its opponents said was aimed at frightening people off the streets and justifying the potential use of force against protesters.
Western countries have forged close ties with the opposition and made no secret of their contempt for the ruler of what Washington calls an outpost of tyranny in Europe. It condemned the campaign as “seriously flawed and tainted”.
While Russia’s relations with Belarus are sometimes strained, the Kremlin is wary of losing its only ally between its western border and Nato countries, and has signalled approval of a Lukashenko victory.
Lukashenko dismissed international criticism. “We in Belarus are conducting the election for ourselves,” he said. “As for sweeping accusations, I’ve been hearing them for 10 years. I’ve already gotten used to them.”
