The polls of the Belarusian electoral schools are as opaque as their own elections. In its ballots the vote option “Against all” is written, but there are no curtains that completely hide the voter of the indiscreet look of the members of the tables, which were selected by the Government months before the elections themselves were announced. In addition, real opposition candidates are in jail or in exile. They are a custom elections with which the Belarusian President, Alexandr Lukashenko —korys, Belarus, 70 years -, he prepares to prolong this Sunday more than three decades in power.
The president does not think about yielding the throne that has been held since 1994. “The time comes, we will think about it,” he said Sunday in his seventh consecutive elections. In the previous ones, 80.1% of the votes were pointed out compared to 10.1% of its rival, Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, whose candidacy joined the entire opposition. That electoral fraud led to mass protests that the regime has systematically repressed over these five years. Today, a five years later, nobody dares to dissent for terror to be arrested.
Tijanóvskaya and other Belarusian opposition leaders in exile led this Sunday a mass demonstration in Warsaw against the Minsk regime. “Together we are unstoppable. As berousy, we will not lose hope. We will claim our country and our return home more than ever, ”he has proclaimed the visible head of the Belarusian dissent.
These elections are also for Minsk a test that everything is under control and has returned to normal. In fact, the Government has avoided carrying out an ostentation of force and security forces discreetly monitored some hidden electoral schools in vans.
Lukashenko’s democracy farce
The irregularities were evident in the 2020 elections, but this time the government has left nothing to chance. In addition to prohibiting the candidacy of any free opponent, some electoral rules have also changed, such as preventing the presence of observers near the tables or polls.
In fact, the Lukashenko regime has avoided the presence of observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) by inviting it just a week in advance. The agency has declined to participate by not having room to prepare its mission.
“Lukashenko is so afraid of the electoral process that does not let there its website a report with the electoral violations of the regime.
The Central Electoral Commission of Belarus announced on October 23 of last year that the elections would take place this Sunday. However, Belpol has had access to numerous government documents that prove that more than 10,000 members of the electoral commissions were selected much earlier, between June and September 2024, through emails sent between Minsk and the local administrations marked as “ only for official use ”.
Once elected, the members of each electoral commission were checked by the Secret Service, the dreaded KGB, before the elections. In addition, Belpol has found in two hundred lists that 82% of the presidents and 72% of the members of the electoral tables have repeated with respect to the parliamentary elections of 2024.
The names of the members of the electoral commissions are secret by law. “It is to protect your personal information, especially from scammers,” argues the president of the Electoral College No. 22 of the Central District of Minsk, Denís Verigo. “In your home you have a carpet. In mine there is no carpet. If I don’t like them, I won’t have any. Each one has their own system and chooses the most correct for their country, ”he replies seeing as comparing the formation of the electoral tables in Spain, where the selection of its members is carried out by draw and is transparent.
In their school there are registered 1,310 voters and 9.30 in the morning of this Sunday they already counted 566 ballots, more than half. All schools began to collect the votes on January 21 in what the authorities call “anticipated vote.” However, for the opposition it is a simple way to make up the votes.
“You can change the votes at night,” says sources from the Human Rights Defensor Viasná, who also emphasize that each table shows its share of the votes in each electoral school, but the final sum send it without further verification by the president of the commission.
The polls of the electoral point No. 22, translucent, do not allow calculating well how many votes are inside. The three observers present at the table, members of parties and social organizations allowed by the Government, have no identification. The three say that no irregularity has occurred throughout the day.
The seal that is made each urn is in the hands of the presidents of the electoral colleges. The opposition denounces that nothing prevents them from accessing after closing and manipulating the votes. “There are two employees of the security forces permanently here,” says Verigo. “They control everything, security is better than in a bank,” he says.
In Melnikaite Street No. 14, more activity is observed, although both electoral points share that the vast majority of voters, practically all, are pensioners. In the latter there are 2,394 registered voters and 935 ballots counted in the previous days. Its three polls are totally opaque and in front of the vote halls, without curtains, there are two people from the organization. “Do you remember that we had the Covid? The health regime prohibits them, ”says the head of the Electoral Commission of that school, Andréi Petujov, about the absence of elements that provide privacy to the voter.
The president of that school says that more people have come to vote than in the protested 2020 elections. “People have understood the way. This year is the 80th anniversary of World War II and they have understood that they do not want a war, ”says Petujov, who concludes the interview by asking him how his table was formed. Three observers remain sitting at the other end of the hall. They claim to be part of the matches that compete with Lukashenko, but they reject identify. “So that? Those who have sent us here already know who we are, ”says one of the women, and adds:” They have let you come and you can talk, everything is fine. “
Outside the school, the drip of pensioners who come to vote is constant. The rest of the adults practically shines for their absence. “We would have to make a monument to the president for not selling the country to the West,” says a woman. “We are peaceful people,” he adds.
Lukashenko’s firm rejection to enter the war of his ally Putin against Ukraine is a key factor in supporting the bellrusic president of his followers. “Our children go to school quietly, do not bombard or shoot them,” says a 65 -year -old man who also wants to remain anonymity and looks like a “vigilate for the protection of public order in the Republic of Belarus.”
This retiree charges a pension of 1,100 Belarus rubles, about 330 euros to change, but the trauma of the postsoviet crisis remains a determining factor in the vote of the elderly. “There is no alternative to Lukashenko. Before arriving we had nothing in the stores and the banks were empty. Now we have everything and the situation is calm, ”he says, although he acknowledges that many have gone, including some close relatives, in search of a better standard of living.
