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EU foreign ministers visited Minsk to press for democratic presidential election, Polish MP says

The German and Polish foreign ministers visited Minsk on Tuesday in an attempt to encourage the Belarusian authorities to conduct the presidential vote scheduled for December 19 in accordance with democratic standards, Robert Tyszkiewicz, a Polish MP of the Civil Platform party, said in an interview with Polskie Radio, BelaPAN said.

“Poland has a vital interest in seeing as much Europe as possible in the east,” Mr. Tyszkiewicz said.

But there is a long way to go, he said, noting that Alyaksandr Lukashenka had recently said that he would be satisfied with winning even 75 percent of the vote, less that the 82 percent that he officially polled in the previous presidential election.

Tadeusz Iwinski, a senior Polish MP of the Democratic Left Alliance, said that he did not doubt that Mr. Lukashenka would win the election in the first round.

“Belarus has an autocratic regime,” he said, predicting that there would no run-off in the country`s presidential campaign. Mr. Lukashenka is ruling the country “in a very successful and clever manner,” he said.

Even if the election were genuinely democratic, the incumbent president would likely to win it as well, the MP said.