2020 Belarusian presidential election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Presidential elections were held in Belarus on Sunday, 9 August 2020. Early voting began on 4 August and ran until 8 August.[1]
This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. (March 2022) |
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Turnout | 84.28% | ||||||||||||||||
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Official results by region | |||||||||||||||||
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Incumbent Alexander Lukashenko was announced by the Central Election Commission (CEC) to have won a sixth term in office, crediting him with just over 80% of the vote.[2] Lukashenko has won every presidential election since 1994,[3] with all but the first being labelled by international monitors as neither free nor fair.[4]
Opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya claimed to have won a decisive first-round victory with at least 60% of the vote, and called on Lukashenko to start negotiations. Her campaign subsequently formed the Coordination Council to facilitate a transfer of power and stated that it was ready to organize "long-term protests" against the official results.[5][6] All seven members of the Coordination Council Presidium were subsequently arrested or went into exile.
All opposition candidates have filed appeals to the Central Election Commission calling for the results to be invalidated.[7] The election was marred by claims of widespread electoral fraud.[8][9][10] Numerous countries refused to accept the result of the election, as did the European Union, which imposed sanctions on Belarusian officials deemed to be responsible for "violence, repression and election fraud".[11] The results of the election led to widespread protests.[12]