Parliamentary elections were held in Belarus on 25 February 2024. The country elected 110 deputies to the lower house of parliament (House of Representatives) and about 12,000 representatives of local councils.
There were no opposition candidates in these parliamentary campaigns — all contenders come from four registered political parties, each of which is pro-government, or pro-government independents. The Belarusian opposition called for boycotting the elections or voting against all. The Belarusian authorities refused to invite observers from the OSCE.
The elections were the first since the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests against the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in office since 1994. Lukashenko warned that the authorities had “learnt our lesson” since the protests and that there would be “no rebellions” during the election. A month before the election, the Belarusian KGB launched a series of raids targeting the families of political prisoners. Observers and human rights organizations have noted that since the protests, the regime has thoroughly “cleansed” the political landscape, and that conditions for free elections are “currently practically absent in Belarus.”
On 29 January 2024, at the meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, Lukashenko expressed confidence that the voting will be held calmly. “The period is so difficult, but, as you can see, it passes calmly. And I’m sure we’ll approach these dates calmly and hold these events just as calmly.” Days before the election, Lukashenko accused the West of trying to use “new triggers to destabilize the society” and claimed that Polish authorities were trying to convince senior Belarusian officials to switch their allegiance as part of a coup plot. Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich noted that Lukashenko was treating the election like a “military operation”, with authorities seeing any vote “as a threat and a pretext to step up repressions and tighten the screws.”
Sources and further reading:
Controlled Belarus elections set to cement Lukashenko’s grip on power, Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/content/651c1766-7237-4e3d-ab3c-6f1f7c76cc92
What to expect from next year’s elections in Belarus, OpenDemocracy