Belarus’ election reinforces authoritarian leader’s 30-year rule

— Belarusian authorities on Monday announced preliminary results from parliamentary and local elections in which only candidates loyal to the country’s authoritarian leader were allowed to compete and the opposition called for a boycott.

The vote further cemented the 30-year rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, who declared his intention to seek another five-year term in a presidential election next year.

Most candidates belonged to the four officially registered parties: Belaya Rus, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Party of Labor and Justice, all of which support Lukashenko’s policies. The Central Election Commission said 73 percent of the country’s 6.9 million eligible voters cast ballots, filling all 110 seats in the national parliament — 51 of which went to Belaya Rus — and 12,514 seats in local councils.

Sunday’s balloting was the first in Belarus since a contentious 2020 vote that handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office and triggered an unprecedented wave of mass demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets. More than 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten in police custody and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations were shut down and outlawed.

Lukashenko has relied on subsidies and political support from his main ally, Russia, to survive the protests. He allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly congratulated Lukashenko on “the confident victory of patriotic forces of Belarus” that helped “ensure internal political stability.”

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is in exile in neighboring Lithuania after challenging Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, called for a boycott of the vote, which she dismissed as a “senseless farce.”

In a surprising development in the tightly controlled nation of 9.5 million, Tsikhanouskaya’s video address was broadcast across Belarus on Saturday after opposition activists managed to gain access to some 2,000 screens used for street advertising. The Viasna Human Rights Center reported Sunday that a number of employees at the company that owns the screens were quickly arrested.

“Farce. Fraud. Military operation. There are many words to describe what is happening in Belarus. But don’t call it elections,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press.