TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Lawmakers in Belarus on Wednesday set the next presidential election for Jan. 26, a vote almost certain to extend the three-decade rule of authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has suppressed all political dissent.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya swiftly denounced the upcoming balloting as a “farce.”
Lukashenko has already said he would seek what would be his seventh consecutive term, extending back to 1994. His last victory came in a 2020 election denounced by the opposition and the West as fraudulent.
That prompted an unprecedented wave of mass protests, and his government responded with a violent crackdown, arresting and beating thousands. Opposition leaders have since been jailed or forced to flee the country.
Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020, urged Belarusians and the world not to recognize the upcoming election amid the continuing political crackdown.
“Lukashenko has set the date for his ‘reelection’ for Jan. 26, but it’s a sham performance without a real electoral process that is taking place in the atmosphere of terror,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press in a statement. “We urge Belarusians and the international community to reject this farce.”
Lukashenko’s current term expires next summer, but election officials said moving the process to the beginning of the year would allow the president “to exercise his powers at the initial stage of strategic planning.”
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Belarusian authorities have not said whether they would invite any international observers to monitor the vote.
Belarus refused to allow monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to observe this year’s parliamentary election for the first time in decades. Under the complete control of Lukashenko’s government, voting booths for the first time didn’t have privacy curtains, and voters were not allowed to take photographs of their ballots, which made it impossible to carry out any independent count.