Regular voting in the Belarusian presidential elections will take place on January 26. The current President Lukashenko has been at the head of Belarus since 1994.
Belarus’ Central Election Commission (CEC) announced on Wednesday that 17.67 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots after two days of early voting in the presidential election. TASR informs about it based on the reports of TASS and Xinhua agencies.
The CEC registered as candidates for the elections the incumbent – unrecognized by the West – President Alexander Lukashenko, Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus Aleh Hajdukevich, Chairman of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice Alexander Chižňak, businesswoman Hanna Kanapacka and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Siarhei Syrankov.
Early voting in the presidential election takes place from January 21 to 25; regular voting will take place on January 26.
The OSCE announced that it would not send observers
The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday, January 17, that the government has invited 450 international observers, including those from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in connection with the presidential election. However, the OSCE declared before that that it would not send its observers to Belarus, which it justified by the too late invitation.
Lukashenko has been the head of Belarus since 1994. After the elections in 2020, he was announced as their winner, even though observers based on independent so-called exit polls reported that opposition candidate Sviatlana Cichanovská received more votes than Lukashenko.
The announcement of the results of the controversial election sparked mass street protests in Belarus. Their participants demanded Lukashenko’s resignation and the calling of new elections. However, the ruling regime brutally suppressed these demonstrations.
