MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Opposition leaders accused the government of arresting exit-poll takers and turning away election observers during a referendum yesterday on whether to allow authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to run for a third term.
State television defied a ban on releasing exit poll results before voting closed, citing a survey favorable to Mr. Lukashenko, and violated a ban on campaigning on election day by broadcasting pro-Lukashenko ads.
About 100 independent exit-poll takers were detained and election observers from the opposition were barred from voting places, opposition leaders said.
“What’s happening here can’t be described as an election. It is not an expression of the democratic will of our people,” said Vintsuk Vyachorka, head of the opposition Belarusian Popular Front.
The European Union and the United States had expressed strong doubts that the referendum would meet democratic standards and warned it could further estrange this isolated nation from its European neighbors.
Mr. Lukashenko, branded Europe’s last dictator, shrugged off the criticism as he voted yesterday, saying: “Turn to your own problems and resolve those. You don’t need to worry so much about us.”
The referendum asks whether Mr. Lukashenko can seek a third term and whether the two-term limit established in the constitution can be scrapped.
Independent opinion polls conducted before the vote showed that Mr. Lukashenko was short of the majority support he needs from the nation’s 7 million registered voters.
However, an exit poll conducted by a previously unknown analytical center, Ecoom, working under the aegis of the Belarusian Central Election Commission, had 82.3 percent of 8,249 voters saying “yes” to Mr. Lukashenko’s third term, center director Sergei Musienko said.
Belarusian state television broadcast the exit poll’s results throughout the day, in violation of a law that bans releasing the results before the voting closes. And although all political campaigning is forbidden on election day, state television continued to broadcast pro-Lukashenko commercials.
An expected exit poll from the independent Gallup Organization/Baltic Surveys was in doubt after more than half of its 200 poll takers were detained, the opposition leaders said.
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