November 22, Pozirk. Pavieł Łatuška of the opposition transition cabinet dismissed yesterday’s announcement of 1.5 million ballot access signatures collected for Alaksandar Łukašenka as a lie, citing numerous reports of violations flagged to the opposition.
“The entire state apparatus of the regime is mobilized to force citizens to provide signatures for the dictator,” the politician said. “This would have required a great deal of work and resources of the initiative group’s members and ideology workers and they didn’t even do it, they just picked a random number.”
Authorities massively force voters to support Łukašenka’s presidential bid during the ballot-access signature collection, threatening employees of the state-run companies and agencies with dismissals and other penalties, he added.
The politician urged Belarusians to vote against all candidates in the upcoming presidential election on January 21-26. “[This will allow] to show your protest to all those who force you to do what you do not want,” Łatuška stressed.
Łukašenka, his supporters Aleh Hajdukievič, Alaksandar Chižniak, Siarhiej Syrankoŭ as well as former MP Hanna Kanapackaja intend to run for president in the seventh presidential election in Belarus. All presidential bidders in Belarus must garner at least 100,000 voter signatures before December 6 to qualify for the race.
The current presidential campaign is taking place in a purged political landscape amid a new wave of crackdown on regime critics. The ongoing politically-motivated reprisals are hampering Łukašenka’s attempts to present the upcoming election as competitive, rights defenders say.
Belarus has not held a single free and fair election since 1996 by the standards of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The previous 2020 presidential race was marred by fraud and police brutality against peaceful protesters.
