Belarus hopes EU likes what it sees on Sunday

Belarusians began voting Sunday in parliamentary elections expected to grant pro-regime candidates a majority of the 110 seats in the lower house.

President Alexander Lukashenko cast his ballot in Minsk, accompanied by his son Nikolai. The Belarusian leader said that the opposition was not in touch with people's interests.

"They are too far away from the people, and they do not want to come closer," Lukashenko said of his opponents. "They do not even want to rule."

About 7 million people are eligible to choose 110 members of parliament from the 490 candidates on September 11. Elections will be based on a majority voting system.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has 400 monitors observing the poll.

There has been little interest in the elections: most citizens being more concerned about surviving in difficult economic times. Parliament "has no say in anything anyway," a passerby said in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

'Democratic election criteria'

President Lukashenko has ruled the former Soviet republic for over 20 years. Until recently, media abroad had referred to him as "Europe's last dictator."

But that moniker seems to have been done away with. These are the first elections in Belarus since the lifting of EU sanctions in February, unlocking assets and canceling travel bans on figures including Lukashenko himself after a long history of human rights violations.

Before sanctions were lifted, Belarus freed several politicians from prison. Unlike previous years, there were no blatant human rights violations in Lukashenko's re-election in 2015. His role as mediator in Ukraine's civil war has seemingly been rewarded by the EU.

Also, Lukashenko has rejected a Russian bid to create a military base on Belarusian soil.

On Sunday, Lukashenko said it was "total nonsense" that Minsk was boosting its relations with the EU at the expense of the ties with Moscow.

He also said Belarus was very close to the agreement with the Kremlin on the new gas prices.

"It's pretty much done," he said.

At the same time, Lukashenko confirmed that the US would soon reopen its diplomatic mission in Minsk.

'Europe on the outside'

Officials are aiming to have Sunday's elections look clean. "We want to do everything so that these elections meet democratic election criteria," Lukashenko said at the end of August.

Or, as the Minsk-based political analyst Yuri Chausov told DW, "the result must meet government requirements but still look like Europe on the outside."

Political scientist Dmitry Bolkunets said Minsk was following the slogan "it's not about the voting, it's about the counting."

"Belarusian authorities have organized the most 'democratic' elections since 2000 to please Brussels and Washington," Bolkunets wrote in an op-ed published on the website of Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station.

"But as soon as the polling stations close, this whole democracy game will end."

Few buy it

For the first time, an opposition journalist has been allowed to become a member of the Media Council of the Central Election Commission, which processes complaints about campaign coverage. Andrei Bastunec, who heads the independent Belarusian Association of Journalists, has been critical of the council's work. "It is more of a pretense of democracy to obscure the situation in election coverage," Bastunec said after joining the council.

Despite the improvements, the new parliament will not have a real opposition. First of all, President Lukashenko's political opponents are scattered across several parties. And it was especially hard for opposition candidates to register for elections this time.

Vladimir Shanzev, a regional head of the opposition United Civil Party, told DW that the UCP had nominated candidates for each of the four constituencies in the city of Mogilev but only two could be registered. Shanzev is particularly concerned about a politician who suddenly withdrew his candidacy. At his workplace, it was insinuated that "not he but people in his environment could get into trouble for his politics," Shanzev said. "Instead of the liberalization that some had expected, we now have an embellishment of political authorities. The core remains the same."