BELARUS: Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said yesterday voters had shown overwhelming support for his plan to stay in power, while thousands took to the streets of the capital Minsk to protest against what they said was a rigged referendum.
Western monitors said Sunday's vote, held in conjunction with parliamentary elections that shut out the liberal opposition, fell badly short of international standards.
"What is said and written is 95 per cent lies," the president told reporters. "There is no dictatorship here and no violation of human rights."
Official figures showed Mr Lukashenko won the support of nearly 80 per cent of voters for a proposal to lift a constitutional rule limiting him to two terms in office.
Up to 2,000 people, mostly students and youths, gathered in central Minsk to protest against Mr Lukashenko, chanting "Shame!" and "Truth! Truth!" and "No to a third term!".
Protesters clashed briefly with police as the crowd approached the president's offices. Police used batons to break up the crowd.
The referendum will enable Mr Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994 in the ex-Soviet state, to run again in 2006. He needed 50 per cent of seven million votes to alter the constitution.
"The results were overwhelming. I didn't expect support to such an extent. Don't look here for tricks or falsification," said a triumphant Mr Lukashenko, a man who is seen in the West as Europe's last hardline leader. He said he had no plans to change his policies.
Western countries accuse him of hounding his opponents, interfering in the election process and closing down independent media outlets. They decry his refusal to abandon Soviet-style command economics.
The opposition, weakened by regular crackdowns and threats of detentions and newspaper closures, said authorities had cheated to get the results.
"Lukashenko has stolen our victory. He falsified the results," opposition leader Mr Nikolai Statkevich told the crowd.
Several local reporters said they had been put under pressure by authorities to write reports favourable to the government. Some reported beatings.
The head of the monitoring mission from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Tone Tingsgaard, said the "vote fell significantly short of (international) standards".
"Democratic freedoms were largely disregarded by the authorities." The OSCE said counting procedures lacked transparency and instances of ballot stuffing were noted.
From the other side of the Atlantic, the US also doubted the vote met international standards.
"The whole process, where a leader from his lofty perch tries to extend his stay in power, is suspect. It's like a referee rigging the game," a State Department official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But Mr Lukashenko chose to dismiss Western criticism yesterday saying: "We turned the elections into a real festival. People came here with prejudices, but we conducted the elections in such a way that there can be no carping."
Neighbouring Russia supported the vote, saying monitors from Commonwealth of Independent States had found no serious law violations.
"In our opinion the results of the voting in Belarus represent public opinion in the republic," a Foreign Ministry statement quoted spokesman Mr Alexander Yakovenko as saying.