MINSK, BELARUS (NYTIMES) - He bungled the coronavirus pandemic, alienated his long-standing foreign ally and last week faced the biggest anti-government protests in decades, but on Sunday (Aug 9), President Alexander G Lukashenko of Belarus was on course to win his sixth term in office, in an election his critics dismissed as rigged.. Read more at straitstimes.com.
MINSK, BELARUS - He bungled the coronavirus pandemic, alienated his long-standing foreign ally and last week faced the biggest anti-government protests in decades, but on Sunday , President Alexander G Lukashenko of Belarus was on course to win his sixth term in office, in an election his critics dismissed as rigged.
Tension escalated sharply Sunday evening after a police truck rammed into a crowd of protesters blocking a major avenue in the centre of the capital, injuring several people. Facing the biggest outpouring of dissent during his 26 years of autocratic rule, he hoped to return his restive country to the predictable political rhythms that have kept him in power.
Tikhanovskaya had entered the race after her husband, Sergey Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and would-be presidential candidate, was arrested and thrown in jail on what were widely viewed as trumped-up financial charges. He has struggled with a faltering economy, anger over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which he denied posed any threat to health, defections by members of the country's economic and political elite and an open rift with his longtime ally and benefactor, President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Valery Tsepkalo, the architect of the country's only significant economic success, a high-tech development zone in Minsk, broke with Lukashenko and had planned to run against him in Sunday's election. But Tsepkalo, warned that he, too, would soon be arrested, fled to Russia last month.
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