Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/10/protests-erupt-in-belarus-afte.html
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Meanwhile the White House remains barricaded waiting for Nov…
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Earlier, the central election commission said Lukashenko, in power for more than a quarter of a century, won 80% of the vote in Sunday’s election
If there’s a next “election” it’ll be 90%. These authoritarian creeps are addicted to having their egos stroked, and there’s always a bunch of drooling sycophants like this election commission willing to bend reality to make it happen and a bunch of thugs like the riot police to demand that the public accept it.
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If there’s a next “election” it’ll be 90%
Ha! That’s nothing, our former Mississauga mayor, Hazel McCallion, polled 91% in a real election (2006).
If history is an indictor, the situation in Belarus will mostly likely go the way that the national military supports. So far, reports seem to be mixed, with today’s news not mentioning military involvement in the crackdown against protestors.
Anyone out there with some solid local knowledge of the situation and not just an armchair analyst like me?
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Belarus is Putin’s test bed for the future of Russia: this will be put down with brutal alacrity, if not by Lukashenko, then by his acolyte.
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I guess Russia must not count as being in Europe
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How long untill Vlad sends in the troops to “stabilize” the situation In Belarus?
I wish the people of Belarus all the best and that they better sooner than later join the family of free european nations.
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Now taking bets for 
congratulating Lukashenko’s great victory.
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Lukashenko and Putin don’t actually like each other. Lukashenko also enjoys being the ruler of an independent sovereign state and would like to keep being the ruler of an independent sovereign state.
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Up next: foreign observers’ judgement of our Nov election.
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If there is a revolution, watch for Russia — who “know” that any popular demonstrations in Belarus must be the work of US/European intelligence agencies — to make another land grab and/or support Russian separatists in Belarus
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Given the fact independent polling is illegal in Belarus, it was never entirely clear quite how vulnerable “Europe’s last dictator” actually became to Ms Tikhanovskaya’s challenge.
But results from a handful of more reliable Minsk polling stations appeared to support the opposition claim that Ms Tikhanovskaya had, in fact, won — and convincingly.
Unprecedented numbers of voters appeared to answer Ms Tikhanovskaya’s call to turn out late on Sunday — and the logic this would make falsifications more difficult. But Lidia Yermoshina, a key Lukashenko ally and chief vote counter as the head of Belarus’s election committee, described the huge queues as “provocations” by the opposition. In an earlier interview on state TV, she described the opposition as a “totalitarian sect”.
Independent exit polls conducted outside polling stations in foreign embassies also painted a starkly contrasting picture to the official figures. According to these surveys, Mr Lukashenko received just 6.25 per cent, compared to Ms Tikhanovskaya with 79.69 per cent.
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The exit poll from voting at embassies is almost exactly an inversion of the Belarusian government’s exit poll.
When polling stations closed at 8pm, the government released exit polls showing that Lukashenko had won 79.7% of the vote and Tikhanovskaya 6.8%. The official results were Lukashenko 80.2% and Tikhanovskaya 9.9%. The protesters viewed both sets of figures with extreme scepticism.
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