Belarus President Lukashenko wins fifth term

(Vatican Radio)  Authorities in Belarus say President Alexander Lukashenko has won a fifth term with 83.49 percent of the vote, despite opposition concerns over the fairness of Sunday’s presidential elections. The perceived autocratic leader has already warned the opposition against protests that could derail the lifting of Western sanctions imposed over reported rights abuses.

Listen to Stefan Bos' report:

The Central Elections Commission suggested that preliminary results showed that long-time President Alexander Lukashenko had received even more votes than in 2010 when he captured nearly 80 percent of the vote in a ballot that sparked opposition protests violently suppressed by authorities.

Ahead of Sunday’s ballot, Lukashenko had said it would be “a bad sign” if he received less votes than five years ago.     

Yet his victory had been seen as a forgone conclusion, with long-standing opposition figures barred from standing in Sunday's vote.

The veteran leader ran against three virtual unknowns -- only one of whom campaigned, and state media giving Lukashenko uniformly positive coverage.

Longest-serving leader

Europe's longest-serving leader had earlier ridiculed his main rival Tatiana Korotkevich, who came in second with just over four percent of the vote. He said she could not handle ruling a country because she is a woman.

Lukashenko, who ruled his nation with an iron fist for some 21 years, also warned the opposition not to protest against the election results. In 2010 protests triggered a crackdown during which a number of leading opposition figures were arrested.

Despite international concerns, the European Union has said it may lift sanctions if the polls and the aftermath of the vote remain accident-free.

Lukashenko made clear he saw no reason for the West to remain opposed to him. "Everything that the West wished , everything that the West wanted to see in the election in Belarus, honestly we have done all of it,” he told reporters. 

"Soft dictatorship"

Yet the newly crowned winner of the 2015 Nobel Literature Prize, Svetlana Alexievich, has warned Europe to beware of Lukashenko, describing his regime as a "soft dictatorship."

Analysts say however that Lukashenko has been a successful exploiter of tensions between Moscow and the West. 

He recently raised his standing with the EU by hosting peace talks in Minsk on the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Despite at times tense relations with Moscow, he and Belarus's Soviet-style planned economy are propped up by Russia, which supplies the country of 9.5 million with energy at a massive discount.