“If there is a desire in the West to improve our relations, nobody and nothing can prevent that”, Lukashenko said as he cast his vote.
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Belarus on Sunday kicked-off its fifth presidential election in 21 years since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Nobody knows the real identity of Ferrante, who writes under a pseudonym; she communicates nearly exclusively by email and letters.
Tatiana Korotkevich, a pro-democracy candidate, challenged the president but fell short of a possible victory by receiving only 5.6 percent of the vote. The average guess was 73% for the 21-year president. Worldwide observers also raised concerns.
Lidia Yermoshina, the head of the Central Election Commission, said results from voting in hospitals and on military bases, even though they represented only 1 percent of voters, already showed his overwhelming win.
Belarus lost almost $3 billion due to economic turmoil in Russian Federation following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, Lukashenko said in June.
Stalinist architecture still dominates the landscape of the capital’s tidy streets. After her father’s demobilisation from the army, the family returned to his native Belorussia and settled in a village where both parents worked as schoolteachers. A large bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, still stands in a tidy, grassy boulevard just off Minsk’s main drag.
The country has a centrally-planned economy and lacks natural resources.
Lukashenko said in an interview that Kolya tags along with him because the boy has a bad temper and won’t listen to anyone else but him. “He has his own opinion and he does not bend to anyone’s will, he protects the interests of his people”, said retired university teacher Valentina Artyomovna as she bought pastries from her polling station’s buffet, part of the authorities’ attempt to create a “holiday atmosphere” for election day. “It would be impossible to survive without Russia’s help”.
Lukashenko’s position with Moscow has come into the spotlight as the Kremlin’s relationship with the West deteriorates over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. To no one’s surprise, he will win.
The West’s latest overtures to Minsk reportedly include lifting sanctions on Belarus – and those imposed on Lukashenko – for four months given there are no severe voting irregularities nor a last-minute crackdown on opposition. Lukashenko barely campaigned; the government plastered the country with posters that simply read “Elections of the President of Belarus”, leaving no doubt as to whom they had in mind. The opposition called for a boycott of the vote. Her writings are a conversation with other students of the human capacity for evil, such as the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl; Hannah Arendt, the great political theorist of totalitarianism; Philip Zimbardo, author of the infamous Stanford prison experiment; and Varlam Shalamov, who, like Solzhenitsyn, chronicled life in the Soviet Gulag.
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Though Belarus’ economy is in recession after the collapse in oil prices and subsequent Russian crisis, most Belarusians enthusiastically support Lukashenko for sustaining their generous social benefits and staving off the chaos in neighboring Ukraine.
