Belarusian opposition parties were left with no seats in parliament yesterday, with most results declared as key elections cast doubt on the ex-Soviet state’s bid for reconciliation with the West.
The Central Elections Commission said results for 99 of the 110 seats showed no gains for opponents of pro-Russian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” by Washington.
“The 99 elected candidates support the current authorities,” commission head Lidia Yermoshina said on Sunday. “There is no opponent among them.”
PHOTO: AFP
Full results were due later yesterday, she said.
Hundreds gathered on Sunday in the center of the capital Minsk to condemn the polls as a “farce” and call for the ouster of Lukashenko, who they criticized for keeping the country deep in Moscow’s orbit.
A sweep by pro-government parties would likely be read as a snub in Washington and Brussels, which have offered better ties with the former Soviet republic if the elections show significant improvements on earlier polls.
Lukashenko, who has ruled this former Soviet republic wedged between Russia and the EU for 14 years, on Sunday hit out at opposition groups for taking “outside” funding.
“A real, constructive opposition is always needed ... but not an opposition fed and financed 100 percent from outside,” he told journalists.
The West has offered to ease sanctions, give economic aid and lift a travel ban on Belarusian leaders if Sunday’s poll shows signs of progress in a country that is also a key transit route for Russian gas exports.
Young protesters gathered in central Minsk after polls closed, holding banners declaring “no to farce,” “dictatorship should go to the dustbin of history,” and “no to Russian military bases.”
They also waved flags of the EU and orange ones mirroring those used in the pro-Western Orange Revolution in neighboring Ukraine in 2004.
Only a few uniformed police could be seen surrounding the opposition rally, in stark contrast to previous post-election protests in Belarus
Earlier, a coalition of anti-Lukashenko groups criticized the election as undemocratic.
“It is clear these elections cannot be recognized as honest and fair under any criteria. We do not recognize the results,” Anatoly Lebedko, the leader of the opposition United Citizen Party, told reporters.
The voter turnout was 75.3 percent, the latest figures from the election commission said. That included more than a quarter of the electorate who cast ballots from last Tuesday through Saturday.
The opposition has criticized the early voting system as giving authorities an easy way to commit fraud, since it was not subject to complete independent monitoring.
Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders complained that Lukashenko’s critics were ignored in state-controlled media during campaigning — a view shared by the demonstrators in Minsk’s October Square.
Thousands had camped out in the same location in March 2006 to protest the results of a presidential vote widely seen as rigged.
Of the 263 candidates fighting for the 110 seats in the lower house of parliament, only 70 are from the United Democratic Forces, a coalition of opposition parties, while the rest are Lukashenko loyalists.
In the country’s last parliamentary elections in 2004, no opposition candidates won a place in the lower house.
Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were to give their appraisal of the poll later yesterday.
Final results were expected to be confirmed on Friday.
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