[ad_1]
MOSCOW—When Svetlana Tikhanovskaya walked into Belarus’s election fee to complain she had been cheated out of a win in final weekend’s presidential election, her marketing campaign workforce anticipated her to shortly emerge to hold on the battle.
Instead, she disappeared, resurfacing the subsequent day in Lithuania. In a video posted on social media, she known as for her supporters to finish their protests and settle for the incumbent, Alexander Lukashenko, as their president.
To his critics, it was a evident instance of how Mr. Lukashenko controls the political system in Belarus, the former Soviet republic he has run since the fall of the Iron Curtain. For years, the 65-year-old longtime Moscow ally has appointed judges and key leaders of the safety providers and state media. He handpicked the chief of the election fee, who has been in the function since 1996. Among his most feared instruments is the nation’s secret coverage, which nonetheless carries its outdated Soviet-era identify, the State Security Committee, or KGB.
But as protests and strikes unfold over his dealing with of the Aug. 9 election, in which Mr. Lukashenko claimed 80% of the vote, the edifice he created is beneath risk.
On Sunday, tens of 1000’s of individuals gathered in Minsk for an eighth consecutive day, chanting at Mr. Lukashenko to “go away” and waving an opposition flag. Across city, a rival rally that the inside ministry mentioned grew to greater than 65,000 gathered in assist of Mr. Lukashenko.
[ad_2]
Source hyperlink