TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The national elections commission in Belarus on Tuesday registered an initiative group for authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to seek a seventh term in office, but rejected the attempts of two opposition politicians to get on the ballot.
The election, scheduled for Jan. 26, would come 4 1/2 years after the 2020 vote that sparked massive nationwide protests and led to a harsh crackdown on opposition that continues.
Major opposition figures were either imprisoned or fled the country in the crackdown, in which some 65,000 people were arrested. Human rights activists say Belarus now holds about 1,300 political prisoners and that many of them are denied adequate medical care and contact with their families.
Since coming to power in 1994, Lukashenko has persistently suppressed opposition and independent news media.
The Central Election Commission on Tuesday opened registration for initiative groups, which must collect at least 100,000 signatures by Dec. 6 to nominate a candidate.
It rejected the registration of initiative groups for the leader of the For Freedom movement, Yuras Hubarevich, citing “violation of the procedure for submitting documents.” Politician Aliaxandar Drazdou also was denied registration.
“These are not elections, but an electoral farce, and the actions of the Central Election Commission only prove that not a single real opponent of Lukashenko will be allowed to participate in the elections,” Hubarevich told The Associated Press.
“The politicians who once dared to challenge Lukashenko are now literally rotting in prison in torture conditions, 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 Viasna human rights group, whose Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder Ales Bialiatski is among those imprisoned.
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