The outcome came as a set-back for Christian activists who have criticized Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko perceived autocratic style, amid raids on evangelical and other independent churches as well as other events deemed dangerous by the government.
Election officials said all 100 seats so far had gone to pro-government candidates, as hundreds of opposition supporters marched in Minsk to protest against the ballot and to urge the West not to endorse it. Only 10 seats remained to be decided. However OSCE monitors said they were prevented or hindered from observing the vote count in many cases.
Polish OSCE observer Pawel Kowal told Polish radio he and his colleagues were also hindered from observing the vote count. “Something stunning was happening in front of our eyes. The process of counting votes was underway, in which nobody could verify anything,” he said in comments monitored by BosNewsLife.
“Several committee members were counting at the same time, shuffling piles of papers, pushing away even the internal observers. When we came back to the hotel, it turned out that all observers had exactly the same experiences,” he added
CHRISTIANS SAD
The results were expected to make it more difficult for activists demanding more religious rights in the country. Lukashenko allied have launched a crackdown on groups seen as undermining their power base, rights watchers have said.
In one of recent incidents targeting religious minorities, Belarus banned a Christian music festival, initiated by Catholics, minutes before it was due to begin, saying organizers had made "mistakes."
Earlier Orthodox Priest Ioann Grudnitsky – who has already been fined for conducting services without state registration – reportedly faced further intimidation when the KGB secret service reportedly banned him from conducted a funeral of a parishioner in the village of Ruzhany.
He went ahead anyway, closely monitored by police officials. "After working our whole lives in factories and on collective farms, sacrificing our health and receiving a tiny pension, we’ve reached a point where we have to ask permission from the local KGB secret police to organise a funeral," the parishioners complained in an open letter to President Lukashenko which was published by rights group Forum 18.
SOME HOPE
President Alexander Lukashenko’s allies claimed all 110 seats in parliament in the election, which the former Soviet republic hoped would gain international recognition for the first time since 1996.
Yet opposition leader Aleksandr Milinkievich has not given up hope. “Today we are supported by one third of society. If we manage to make it over a half of society, everything will be ok with Belarus," he told Polish radio. "And this is a mundane everyday work: information, education, analysis and so on. People should see that there is a wise alternative, which can offer something they like," he added.
President Lukashenko has been labelled by the United States as "Europe’s last dictator" for suppressing human rights and free speech. He recently said he wanted to improve relations with the West, but observers suggested these words have been overshadowed by the outcome of Sunday’s controversial elections.
"The clear signals to improve the election process were not implemented and substantial improvements are required if Belarus is to conduct genuinely democratic elections in line with our common OSCE commitments,” said Anne-Marie Lizin, Vice President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and Special Co-ordinator of the OSCE short-term observers.
"Unfortunately the repeated signals of good will did not seem to have been correctly given or received. Consequently the significant progress we hoped for in the democratic development of Belarus did not materialize," Lizin stressed. (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos. BosNewsLife NEWS WATCH is a regular look at major news developments impacting the church and/or compassionate professionals).
