The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Mass protest but president vetoes rerun of election
BELARUS: Pressure rising on Lukashenko amid ninth day of anti-government rallies
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, under pressure from huge protests after an election that gave him a sixth term in a landslide, has vehemently rejected any possibility of holding a rerun of the vote.
He spoke at a rally of thousands of supporters in Minsk yesterday. Meanwhile, large crowds streamed toward the site of an opposition rally 1.5 miles away in the capital city, the ninth straight day of anti-government rallies.
The authoritarian president has ruled the ex-soviet nation with an iron fist since 1994, repressing opposition figures and independent news media.
But this year, fed up with the country’s declining living standards and Mr Lukashenko’s dismissal of the coronavirus pandemic, sustained anti-government protests before and after the August 9 presidential election have posed the biggest challenge to his 26-year rule.
Yesterday, the 65-year-old accused Western powers of interfering in his country’s sovereignty. He claimed they were gathering military units in countries along Belarus’s western borders and denounced suggestions by some Western nations that Belarus should rerun its August 9 presidential vote, which opposition supporters say gave Mr Lukashenko a victory only through massive fraud.
“If we follow their lead (and rerun the election), we will perish as a state,” Mr Lukashenko declared yesterday, a day after saying he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed Russia will send unspecified security assistance to Belarus if he asks for it.
In previous months, Mr Lukashenko had warned Putin wanted to take over Belarus, a nation of 9.5 million people in eastern Europe that has a long border with Russia.
Election officials said last week that Mr Lukashenko won a sixth term with about 80% of the vote. Protesters claim the election was a sham and allege results were manipulated.