Reuters - 10.18.2004

Belarus Leader, Buoyed by Poll, Sees No Policy Change

By Olena Horodetska 

MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, seen in the West as Europe's last hard-line leader, expressed delight Monday at an endorsement of his plan to stay in power and said he saw no reason to alter policy. 

But Western monitors said the referendum, held in conjunction with parliamentary elections which shut out the liberal opposition, fell badly short of international standards. 

"What is said and written is 95 percent lies," Lukashenko retorted at a news conference. "There is no dictatorship here and no violation of human rights." 

Lukashenko won the support of nearly 80 percent of registered voters for a proposal to lift a constitutional rule limiting him to two terms. And the ex-Soviet state's beleaguered liberal opposition was kept out of parliament. 

Sunday's vote will enable Lukashenko, already in power since 1994, to run again in 2006. 

"The results were overwhelming. I didn't expect support to such an extent. Don't look here for tricks or falsification," a beaming but reserved Lukashenko said. 

"I will do everything to ensure no one regrets this choice. The people have spoken in favor of my policies and I have no right to break with them. Our reforms are an evolutionary development of what remained from the Soviet Union." 

Lukashenko needed 50 percent of seven million voters -- not merely a majority of those voting Sunday -- to alter the constitution. 

Western countries accuse Lukashenko of hounding his opponents, interfering in the election process and closing down independent media outlets. They decry his refusal to abandon Soviet-style command economics. 

SHORT OF INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS 

The head of the monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Tone Tingsgaard, said the "vote fell significantly short of (international) standards."

"Democratic freedoms were largely disregarded by the authorities." 

Tingsgaard said the staging of the referendum, the second time Lukashenko has resorted to a plebiscite to extend his mandate, "contributed to a highly distorted campaign environment." 

Lukashenko dismissed Western criticism out of hand. 

"We turned the elections into a real festival. People came here with prejudices, but we conducted the elections in such a way that there can be no carping," he said. 

He also disregarded any notion of an opposition in Belarus, saying those who disapproved of his policies were "agents of specific groups, just like we said in Soviet times." 

Opposition parties failed to win a single seat in the 110-member lower house and said long before voting ended that the election was rife with cheating and intimidation. 

Liberals, who boycotted the last election four years ago, had joined forces in the hope of winning at least a handful of seats to weaken the president's grip on power. 

Lidiya Ermoshina, Belarus's top election officer, said all but three of the lower chamber's seats had been decided in the first round -- 12 from parties loyal to the president. The rest were independents unopposed to his policies. She described the referendum turnout of 90 percent as "unprecedented." 

The Soviet-era farm boss used referendums in 1996 to prolong his stay in power a first time and dissolve parliament. That and all elections since were denounced in the West as fraudulent.