On January 26th, the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Belarus announced that President Alexander Lukashenko had secured a seventh term in office, extending his presidency that began over 30 years ago. This landslide 2025 reelection result for the Putin ally was most certainly expected as was his win in 2020, yet one aspect was notably different this year – the absence of a legitimate opposition candidate. In the span of five years, Lukashenko has increased his consolidation of power, meanwhile stifling any source of opposition that could realistically contest the highest office in Minsk. Although there were indeed other candidates in this year’s ballot, the approved list of contenders largely had no true intention of ousting Lukashenko, with many supportive of the incumbent including runner-up Communist Party leader Sergei Syrankov. Outwardly voicing his support for his presidential opponent, he declared that “there is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country.” Such a statement speaks volumes over how democracy has since rapidly devolved beginning since Lukashenko first took office after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Looking further into the case of Belarus under Lukashenko, democracy has become a rarity if it ever existed since its independence in 1991. While Belarus at least nominally completes the democracy checklist of Adam Perzworski, it has yet to see any transition of power as Lukashenko has not once lost reelection to any opponent, mirroring the pre-2024 ‘Botswana Rule’. Lukashenko initially came to power in 1994 through the first democratic elections held in the nation following a transition period headed by Stanislav Shushkevich, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus who signed the accords that formalized the dismantling of the Soviet Union. This 1994 election would be the only of now seven presidential elections in Belarus that managed to trigger a second round runoff between Lukashenko and former PM Vyacheslav Kechib. Every election since then has produced an outright majority in the first round with runner-ups amounting to meager vote shares. The looming question then is how has Lukashenko maintained his own power as many authoritarian nations, including fellow former Soviet nations, have at least seen some glimpse of a transition of power. 

What has been key to Lukashenko’s anti-democratic success has been a complete overhaul and centralization of the political and civil spheres of Belarusian society. This centralization then serves the purpose of fortifying and strengthening his own executive privileges and eliminating dissent, generating at least some superficial perception of a flourishing nation. Such governmental aims fall in line perfectly to a severe degree in theories of authoritarian maintenance, associated with the notions of strategic manipulation and executive aggrandizement as Nancy Bermeo attests in “On Democratic Backsliding”. 

In a recent example of a Belarusian rendition of executive aggrandizement, a referendum was put to vote in 2022, proposing various additions to their constitution, mostly regarding presidential, parliamentary provisions and other civic measures. With an overwhelming majority recorded voting “Yes” for the referendum according to state sources, this referendum added an obscene amount of privileges and powers for Lukashenko that would extend even after his presidency comes to an end guaranteeing another 2030 election victory. Beyond the powers granted to Lukashenko as president, this amendment grants him lifetime immunity from any charges he could face after political office. In addition to this, Lukashenko as a former President could still rule in a de facto setting as a member of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly which was elevated to be the supreme political body in the nation. Attached to these demonstrations of executive aggrandizement is then the obverse in the further disenfranchisement of the opposition from political participation. New requirements to run for president state that citizens who have lived in Belarus for 20 years prior to an election and have not become citizens or received benefits from a foreign nation, prohibiting exiled opposition leaders such as 2020 candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Since the 2020 election it was reported that roughly 50,000 had been arbitrarily detained with thousands being convicted there after, many saying such charges held no legal bearing being purely brought up on political grounds. Such charges often lumped into the category of ‘extremism’, a textbook tactic in the way strategic manipulation manages to avoid heavy scrutiny.

Returning to the present, it is glaringly evident the ways in which democracy has yet to take hold in Belarus since its release from over 70 years of Soviet rule. Although the Soviet Union has since expired, a Cold War can still be identified influencing the manners in which former constituent countries engage in democracy. As Western democracies often seek to criticize identifiable violations originating in anti-democratic nations, genuine concern for the state of democracy in these nations is treated as nothing more than a battle of words influenced by hidden bias and objective to obscure one’s own democratic flaws. Following the publication of results of CEC indicating a landslide by the incumbent self-ascribed dictator, European leaders expressed their denunciations of the result as a “sham” where citizens had “no real choice”. The response to this echoed nothing more than the perception that these denunciations are politically motivated with little importance to Lukashenko who bluntly declared, “I don’t give a damn about the West.” Demonstrations in protest of these elections pale in comparison to the organization that was seen in 2020 as only a few have taken place abroad, drastically reducing the potential success of a vigilant opposition movement in the near future.