Nearly 24 hours after Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko stole an election and launched a brutal crackdown against his people, the Trump administration has yet to condemn the violence. It’s an inexcusable abdication of American moral leadership.
The evidence is clear. Lukashenko intimidated his political opponents against turning up to vote, and his security forces prevented some from voting. Then, when it became clear that a majority of Belarusians had voted against the man who has ruled as dictator for 26 years, Lukashenko simply declared victory. An obvious follower of the Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Un school of electoral mathematics, Lukashenko claimed he secured 80% of the vote. His main opposition opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, supposedly received just 10% of the vote. The ludicrous gall of this claim is measured by those polling stations that showed the courage to count accurately. They gave Tsikhanouskaya a clear margin of victory. Calling for new elections and a peaceful transfer of power, Tsikhanouskaya on Monday stated, “I consider myself the winner of this election.”
