A voter at Minsk’s polling station 509, 11 September 2016. (c) Viktor Tolochko / Visual RIAN. All rights reserved.On Sunday, Belarus went to the polls, returning two nominal opposition candidates to the parliament. Indeed, the ruling elite of “Europe’s last dictatorship” were likely pleased to see international headlines focused on something positive for a change. While completely aware that they had enacted no democratic reforms of substance since the last parliamentary elections in 2012 (instead promoting the current system’s further calcification), Belarus’ elite successfully avoided a new round of confrontation with both the EU and the United States.
The usual post-Soviet toolkit of egregious voting falsification was deliberately employed. The warm welcome extended to international observers did not shame the Belarusian authorities into developing more sophisticated techniques to achieve their desired outcome. Reports of ballot box stuffing, non-transparent vote counting, carouseling (the practice of shuffling voters from one precinct to another to vote again and again) were rolled out much as they have been over the past two decades.
The tepid response from the west has been discouraging, though not for want of informed observation and documentation of the numerous standing obstacles to free and fair elections taking place in Belarus. When commenting on the elections, the initial press release from OSCE could muster only two positive statements which noted that the elections were “efficiently organised” and “the election administration exhibited a welcoming approach towards international observers”.
