Election Day today in
Belarus
, with the opening of approximately 5,500 polling stations for the first unified election day in the country's history.
In fact, we vote for both
administrative
and
legislative
elections .
Tass reports it.
A total of 263 candidates are running for the
House of Representatives
(Lower House of Parliament) with 110 seats, while 18,802 are vying for 12,514 seats in local councils.
The polls will close at 8pm. Voting abroad is not foreseen.
The unified election day is held under the country's updated Constitution, approved in February 2022. Members of Parliament and local councils will be elected simultaneously for five years.
Meanwhile, Belarusian President
Alexander Lukashenko
has announced his intention to run in the 2025 presidential elections. "Believe me, it is very important, no person, no responsible president will leave behind his people who followed him into battle," he declared to state news agency Belta.
The previous presidential election took place in Belarus in 2020. After the vote in the country, mass protests broke out against the results for several months.
The opposition refused to recognize the election results announced by the authorities and called them rigged.
Lukashenko has been in power in Belarus for 30 years, since 1994
.
No plan to overthrow the government will work in Belarus, Lukashenko said, quoted by Tass.
"They (the government's opponents, ed.) will not be able to implement any option in Belarus, not even the most radical one. We know how to learn from the mistakes of the past, so they have nothing to hope for," he told reporters after voting for parliamentary and local elections.
For her part,
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya
, leader of the Belarusian opposition in exile, launched an appeal through platform its own citizens, the Constitution and common sense. I urge Belarusians and the international community to categorically reject this farce."
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