Belarusians set to give Lukashenko fifth presidential term

President Alexander Lukashenko was set to win a fifth term in today's election with ease, but he said anything less than 80 per cent of the vote would be a sign that his support was slipping.
Both the official exit polls and the chief election official later predicted he would get even more.
The authoritarian leader faced no serious competition in the election, which was boycotted by the opposition.
About 100 opposition supporters held a protest march after polls closed to show their discontentment, but the demonstration ended peacefully.
"Lukashenko himself set the election, set his competitors and set the per cent that he would receive," said Vadim Venyarsky, 34, who was among the protesters.

While no reliable independent exit polls were conducted, the state sociology institute said its survey suggested Lukashenko would get 83 per cent of the vote.

Lidia Yermoshina, the head of the Central Election Commission, said results from voting in hospitals and on military bases, even though they represented only 1 per cent of voters, already showed his overwhelming win.
"These data give the idea, the picture and tendency of the whole society: 89 per cent voted for Alexander Lukashenko," she announced as soon as polls closed.
Even before polls opened in the former Soviet republic, the Central Election Commission announced that 36 percent of the 7 million registered voters had cast their ballots during five days of early voting.

By 6 pm (1500 GMT) on election day, the official turnout stood at 82 percent, although many polling stations in the capital and nearby villages were nearly empty during the day. Opposition leaders denounced the early voting as an ideal instrument for falsifying the result. International observers also raised concerns.
"It is very unusual for us to find that a country has an election so many days," James Walsh, who heads the delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, told The Associated Press. "Most democracies have a challenge in getting its citizens ... To come out and vote."

Walsh said the observers have questions about the security of the ballot boxes, an issue also raised by the opposition.