Events
Lukashenko dismisses claims about electoral fraud
MINSK, 18 September (BelTA) – There was no electoral fraud, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he addressed the women's forum For Belarus in Minsk on 17 September, BelTA has learned.
“I swear to you, there was no electoral fraud. One cannot rig 80% of votes [that the head of state won at the recent presidential election],” the president said.
“They [the opponents] did not want the results of the election, otherwise they would not have attacked the peaceful capital before polling stations closed. They launched that attack two and a half hours in advance, gathering at lunchtime, when people were going to the stations to vote. The entire day [9 August – the main voting day] was made up of provocations,” the head of state noted. “The last provocation was to trap innocent people – members of election commissions at 69 polling stations in Minsk and some other cities of the country. Those were mainly women, teachers, doctors who were doing their civil duty,” he added.
“I had to order the army to evacuate them by armored vehicles. That was unacceptable, and that was what started it all. I could not tolerate that,” the Belarusian president stressed.
Everyone was shocked by “the disproportionate violence used by the riot police, who allegedly beat up people at Okrestina [in the detention center in Okrestina Lane],” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted. “I can tell you for sure, because some people are unaware of this: the riot police do not work and have never worked in detention centers. It is the domain of the internal troops. But those guys bore the brunt of hate, because it was them who saved the country and prevented a blitzkrieg,” the president stated. “The blitzkrieg under those white-red-white flags failed. It had been doomed to fail long before. It could not happen in our country. And it never will,” he added.
The head of state said that after they did not manage to seize the power on the fly, trampling the capital and raising the whole country, they moved on to the next stage in their textbook. “Beautiful girls with white flowers and in white dresses, in white silks or without them took to the streets of Minsk – the beautiful, welcoming, clean hero city. They wanted to show that they were peaceful, after they had been stopped in the streets and squares. But that failed too,” he remarked.
Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that he did not want to say that girls and women who took part in the protests were bad. “No, the girls who were standing in the streets are our girls. They will come to their senses. Many already have. There are also others like you, who came here today and spoke their mind,” the president noted.
He went on saying that when yet another stage failed to yield results, when the protests started to die down, they resorted to provocations in a bid to revive them. “Everyone hoped for our response, for a violent response. They flocked to the Palace of Independence, trying to storm it. It didn’t work out. One more stage was unsuccessful. We remained patient,” the head of state said.
According to him, after that they launched the next stage –a strong foreign political and diplomatic pressure. “The neighboring countries would not recognize the election results. They found a female Belarusian Guaido [Aleksandr Lukashenko compared former presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya with self-proclaimed Venezuela President Juan Guaido who is not recognized as such by most countries] and named her president,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said. “Look at them, passing the baton from Lithuania to Poland, from Poland to Ukraine. But this did not work out either,” he added.
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