Alexander Lukashenko has claimed a seventh consecutive five-year term as president of Belarus after a decisive victory in the recent election, which Western governments have denounced as fraudulent.
According to the country’s electoral commission, Lukashenko received 86.8% of the vote in Sunday’s election.
Alexander Lukashenko born 30th August 1954, in the settlement of Kopys in Vitebsk Region of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
What You Didn’t Know about Lukashenko
Has there been any other president before Alexander Lukashenko?.
No! Lukashenko a Belarusian politician, has been the first and to date, only president of Belarus since the office’s establishment in 1994, making him the current longest-serving head of state in Europe.
Lukashenko graduated from the Mogilyov Teaching Institute and the Belarusian Agricultural Academy. In the mid-1970, and he was an instructor in political affairs. He also spent five years in the army.
Before embarking on his political career, Lukashenko worked as the director of a state farm (sovkhoz) and served in both the Soviet Border Troops and the Soviet Army. In 1990,, he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he assumed the position of head of the interim anti-corruption committee of the Supreme Council of Belarus. In 1994, he won the presidency in the country’s inaugural presidential election after the adoption of a new constitution.
In 1996 he persuaded voters to approve a new constitution that gave him sweeping additional powers, including the right to prolong his term in office, to rule by decree, and to appoint one-third of the upper house of parliament. An authoritarian and unpredictable leader, he resisted economic and political reforms, suppressed dissent in the media and among the people, and led Belarus into isolation from its European neighbours and the international community.
Lukashenko’s Opposition
Lukashenko is the seventh time president of the country without any form of opposition as his opponents end up in jail or exile.
On Sunday 26th January 2025, the US and the EU said in the run-up to the election, that it could not be free or fair because independent media are banned in Belarus and all leading opposition figures have been jailed or forced to flee abroad.
The close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had earlier defended his jailing of dissidents and declared: “I don’t give a damn about the west.”
Exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya called the election a “farce,”.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, on Saturday called the election a “sham” and said “Lukashenko doesn’t have any legitimacy”.
The electoral commission said turnout was 85.7% in the election, in which 6.9 million people were eligible to vote. An earlier exit poll broadcast on state television projected that Lukashenko would take 87.6% of the vote.
“The people of Belarus had no choice. It is a bitter day for all those who long for freedom and democracy,” said Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister.
The Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski expressed mock surprise that “only” 87.6% of the electorate appeared to have backed Lukashenko. “Will the rest fit inside the prisons?” he posted.
Lukashenko a 70-year-old former collective farm boss – suppressed mass protests against his rule in 2020 and allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine in 2022. The opposition and the west said Lukashenko had rigged the last presidential vote and authorities cracked down on demonstrations, with more than a thousand people still jailed.
All of Lukashenko’s political opponents are either in prison – some held incommunicado – or in exile along with tens of thousands of Belarusians who have fled since 2020.
Lukashenko said on Sunday that his opponents were behind bars or abroad out of choice. “Some chose prison, some exile,” he said. “If it is prison then it’s those who opened their mouths too widely, repenting and asking for pardon were preconditions for any prisoner releases”.
