The Belarusian National Election Commission registered the initiative committee that nominated authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko for a seventh term, but rejected the attempts to register two politicians from the opposition, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
The election is scheduled for January 26, four and a half years after the 2020 vote that sparked massive nationwide protests and led to a heavy crackdown on the opposition that continues today.
Prominent opposition figures are either in jail or have fled the country because of the crackdown, which has seen some 65,000 people arrested. According to human rights activists, there are about 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus, and many of them are deprived of adequate medical care and contact with their families.
Since coming to power in 1994, Lukashenko has relentlessly repressed the opposition and independent media.
The country's Central Electoral Commission today opened the registrations of initiative committees, which must collect at least 100,000 signatures by December 6 to nominate a candidate. She refused to register the initiative committees of the leader of the "For Freedom" movement. Juras Gubarević, referring to "violations of the document submission procedure". Registration was also denied to politician Alexander Drazdu.
"This is not an election, but an electoral farce and the actions of the Central Election Commission only prove that no real opponent of Lukashenko will be allowed to participate in the elections," said Gubarevich. "Politicians who once had the courage to challenge Lukashenko are now literally rotting in prison under conditions of torture, there has been no contact with them for over a year and some of them are in very poor health," said Pavel Sapelka, a spokesman for the human rights group "Vyasna", whose founder and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Ales Bilyacki, is among those imprisoned.