Belarus voting on Lukashenko

2004-10-17 09:19

Minsk - Polling stations opened early on Sunday in Belarus for a referendum on whether authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko should be allowed to run for a third straight term, as well as for parliamentary elections.

"All polling stations opened normally at 08:00," central elections commission spokesperson Vladimir Chernikov told AFP. Voting was to end at 20:00.

Belarus's seven million voters were being asked to vote "yes" or "no" to a constitutional change that would allow Lukashenko to run for a third term in 2006, when his current tenure ends. Under the present constitution, he can only be elected for two consecutive terms.

Citizens will also be voting for the former Soviet republic's 110-seat parliament. Preliminary results are expected overnight.

The Belarus leader has already said he is certain to win the referendum and has vowed his supporters would win every single seat in parliament, which is seen as little more than rubber-stamping Lukashenko's decisions.

Although the poll officially began on Sunday, all voters were encouraged to start casting ballots as early as Tuesday. No special document was required in order to do so, and about a third of all ballots were already expected to have been cast.

The opposition says this practice is one of the authorities' main ways of rigging the vote and has already called an unauthorised protest for Monday in Minsk.

The pan-European OSCE rights and democracy watchdog has sent observers to monitor the vote, while the United States and the European Union have raised doubts about the ballot's fairness.

- AFP