Elections in Belarus: what for?

By Shukurah Oluwatobi Lawal*

The announcement of an election date usually offers citizens the prospect of expressing their political views, but for most in Belarus, the announcement of the presidential elections, scheduled for 26 January 2025, only triggered a sense of déjà vu, strongly reminding them of past elections and how these have been blatantly manipulated by Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime. While state-owned organisations continue to display some sort of selective amnesia as regards the regime’s past violations, the vast majority of Belarussians continue to suffer from the blowback of the 2020 presidential elections.

As expected, the regime has been doing a lot of “housekeeping” and PR ever since it blatantly ignored Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s electoral victory in August 2020 and instead, declared Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus’ long-time autocratic ruler, winner. Numerous laws, regulations and legal amendments have been adopted and implemented in recent years, pointing to the creation of a rigid totalitarian structure, characterised not just by the furthering of deliberately exclusionary practices, but in fact an increasingly strict control by the regime over all aspects of life, thus inherently violating and further curtailing Belarusians civil freedoms, political liberties, as well as their basic human rights.

The appointment of new state officials, selective presidential pardons, carefully orchestrated meetings with presumptive civil society organisations by regime members, as well as the establishment of a public election observation centre, are measures that have no other purpose than to create the illusion of a free and fair election. This effort, targeting not just the people of Belarus but the international community, continues to persist.

Several reports had initially speculated that, after successfully consolidating the regime’s power in the wake of the 2024 legislative elections, Lukashenko had planned to step down and hand over power to the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, where he, the body’s chairman, and other regime loyalists from within government and industry circles would dictate and determine the country’s political future. Yet, his announcement to run again as presidential candidate in this month’s elections did not come as a surprise to anyone. As Lukashenko pledged in 2020, and following the 2022 Belarusian constitutional referendum as well as more recently during a visit to Lahoysk, to transfer power to the “next generation”, it has become obvious that the phrase “handing over power” is nothing but a discursive instrument in the multi-layered authoritarian toolbox of the Belarusian ruler.

In an effort to create the appearance of a free and fair election, Belarus’ Central Election Commission named five candidates for the upcoming presidential elections, notably Lukashenko himself, Aleksandr Khizhnyak (Chairman of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice), Oleg Gaidukevich (Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus), Anna Kanopatskaya (member of the United Civic Party and former presidential candidate), and Sergei Syrankov (First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus). Three of these “alternative” candidates are representatives of pro-regime parties that have benefited greatly from the most recent crackdown on political party registration, and the fourth, the presumably “independent” candidate, Anna Kanopatskaya (a former presidential candidate in 2020), cannot be considered a credible contender either, even though she has been a harsh critic of Russia’s expanding influence in Belarus.

Local human rights organisations have been reporting that, in the run up to the elections, voters have systematically refrained from submitting their signatures nominating candidates other than Lukashenko out of fear that this would be interpreted by the regime as a sign of “disloyalty”. This occurred against the backdrop of new laws that – by prohibiting curtains at voting booths – de facto erode the privacy of voting, criminalise the taking of photographs of the ballots, preclude the presence of independent election observers, and led to the deregistering of several opposition parties. Clearly, these measures demonstrate the ugly reality of “elections” in Belarus and show that they are nothing but an “empty ritual”, cultivated with fear and repression.

Opposition parties and their respective leaders have repeatedly called for a boycott of Sunday’s elections, as Lukashenko is set to further centralise power and secure total control over all aspects of life in the country. In this sense, the 2024 parliamentary elections were a first blueprint for what is now unfolding, and the persecution of opposition parties and their respective leaders and members, or anyone critical of the regime, is highly unlikely to end anytime soon, quite regardless of some probable tactical moves on the part of Lukashenko, such as the further release of some political prisoners.

With regime-approved narratives portraying Lukashenko as the only person that can ensure peace and stability in full swing and considering the rise of fears by large segments of society of further state repression, pro-democracy forces – inside and outside the country – have increasingly become divided over how to handle Lukashenko’s shift towards totalitarian rule. Whereas, on the one hand, some members of the domestic opposition seem ready to gradually abandon their reluctance to engage in dialogue with the regime, others, such as the opposition in exile, continue to outrightly refuse such an option, warning that this would be exploited by Lukashenko for legitimacy gains whilst just feeding into a growingly discernible opposition fatigue.

As early voting has already kicked off on 21 January, the ultimate question is undoubtedly not about who will emerge as the winner but rather what the next steps of Lukashenko, Belarus past and future ruler, will be and to what extent he will consider the easing of repression and distancing Belarus from Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine as strategically viable moves. Whilst at this point the prospect of both seems rather unlikely, it is beyond doubt that whatever he eventually does will, first and foremost, be determined by one consideration only, notably measures that are conducive to regime survival.

* Shukurah Oluwatobi Lawal is the Administrative Coordinator of REDEMOS.

 

Photo: Election Day, 11th October 2015, Voting in Valozhyn. Photo credits: Marco Fieber via Flickr.