“The results of the exit poll by the Sociology Institute are as such: Alexander Lukashenko is leading with 82.9% of the vote”.
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Alexsander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has swept to a fifth term in office following presidential elections that once again cemented his autocratic rule over a country he has dominated since 1994.
The vote was being closely watched by the European Union, with officials indicating the bloc was ready to lift sanctions against the authoritarian leader, regularly accused of rights abuses, if the aftermath of the polls remains incident-free.
Even before polls opened in the former Soviet republic, however, the Central Election Commission announced that 36 percent of the 7 million registered voters had cast their ballots during five days of early voting.
Lukashenko at a polling station in Minsk on Sunday.
“This time it’s a really shameless fraud”, said Mr Sannikov, who ran as an opposition candidate in 2010, but was beaten up and jailed for two years after the election.
The Belarusian president has portrayed himself as a man who has brought and maintained a level of stability to his country, and ensured a reasonable level of prosperity for its people despite Belarus being marginalised by the West.
The 61-year-old strongman’s ultra-close, and often freakish relationship with his third son, the child of his doctor, has held the former Soviet state in thrall, where Lukashenko’s personal life is widely discussed, albeit cautiously.
EU foreign ministers have agreed to suspend sanctions for four months, after the elections passed off without incident, France’s European affairs minister Harlem Desir told reporters after a meeting in Luxembourg.
Lukashenko said it would be a bad sign if he received fewer votes than during the last election in 2010, when he won 79.65 percent.
Harstedt also said Belarusian authorities created “an uneven playing field for campaigning”, blurring the line between Lukashenko’s candidacy and the interests of the state.
The US State Department said on Monday (local time) worldwide observers had noted “serious problems” with the October 11 vote, which elected strongman Alexander Lukashenko to a fifth term as president by a landslide.
Lukashenko took 83.49 per cent of the vote, election chief Lidiya Yermoshina said, with his nearest rival Tatiana Korotkevich mustering just 4.42 per cent of the ballot.
“The president here has masses of powers, from security to the economy, that so far a person in a skirt can not carry out”, he said.
“The election commissions made up the results as they wished”, said long-time opposition politician Anatoly Lebedko.
The opposition called for a boycott of the vote.
“We have carried out everything the West wanted on the eve of the elections”.
But several Belarussians told AFP they viewed Lukashenko’s behaviour toward his son as abnormal, saying it put enormous psychological pressure on the child.
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“When we began the campaign, I had a rating of 2 per cent. It would be odd to say that we want to win”, she said in the interview.
