Civil unrest in Belarus as exit polls show President Alexander Lukashenko winning reelection

A protester in Belarus gets arrested. BBC/Reuters. 

Civil unrest has struck Belarus as exit polling shows President Alexander Lukashenko winning reelection. BBC. Lukashenko was recorded as winning 80% of the vote in the exit polling with challenger  Svetlana Tikhanovskaya only getting 7% of the vote. The vote was expected to be rigged by Tikhanovskaya and her party says it will give its own count of the election. International observers also criticized the election due to mail in ballots and a lack of outside monitoring. In response rioters have begun to protest against the government. Lukashenko is often called Europe's last dictator and has been criticized for his response to the coronavirus. 

My Comment:

I do find it pretty hilarious that the BBC cited early voting and a lack of international observers as evidence of a rigged election. I am sure that they won't criticize the United States for the same thing when our election happens. Apparently elections are only rigged when liberals lose. 

As for the election, I am not sure how rigged it is. I am guessing that Lukashenko probably did win the election but that he also cheated as well. I don't trust him but I trust the opposition, which is backed by the Western media, either. And I wouldn't be surprised if the opposition resorted to election fixing as well. 

This smells a lot like a "color" revolution to me. Though I am sure there are people in Belarus that are organically opposed to Lukashenko, I wouldn't doubt if NGO's and foreign governments aren't trying to prop up the opposition to Lukashenko. My guess is they want him gone and don't care if the situation devolves into civil war or worse. They didn't care when the same thing happened in Ukraine...

That being said, Lukashenko is a dictator and he does many of the things other dictators do. Free press isn't really a thing in Belarus and he has thrown his political opponents in jail. He's also basically a communist, keeping state control over businesses. He's not a nice man by any means. 

As for Coronavirus, I don't know how important the issue actually is in Belarus. I do know that Lukashenko has been portrayed as not caring about it, but the media always does that to people they don't like so I'm not sure how true it is. It's very possible that it is pretty terrible and Lukashenko's public statements have been a joke. 

I do have to say that I do worried that things could spiral out of control. The problem with dictators like Lukashenko is that they often try to crack down when protests happen. When that works it's effective but there is always a possibility that the backlash will cause the situation to spiral into civil war...