The smiling face of President Alexander Lukashenko gazed out from campaign posters across Belarus on Sunday as the country held an orchestrated election virtually guaranteed to give the 70-year-old autocrat yet another term on top of his three decades in power.
“Needed!” the posters proclaim beneath a photo of Lukashenko, his hands clasped together. The phrase is what groups of voters responded in campaign videos after supposedly being asked if they wanted him to serve again.
And according to a nighttime statement by the Central Election Commission, the strongman leader won by a landslide, garnering nearly 87% percent of the vote.
But his opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled
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