Belarus concludes registration for the 2025 presidential election, allowing six token candidates to “challenge” dictator Alexander Lukashenko at the ballot.

Ahead of the upcoming election, Belarusian law enforcers conduct sweeping raids, human rights group Viasna reports.

Six candidates have been approved by the Belarusian Central Election Committee (CEC) to “challenge” dictator Alexander Lukashenko in the upcoming 2025 presidential election. The candidates, who are all loyal to Lukashenko, will begin collecting signatures to enter the race. Meanwhile, independent election observers will attempt to monitor the conduct of the “election” from afar due to restrictions on their presence in Belarus. They have established the “Human Rights Activists for Free Elections” campaign to gather information from publicly available sources. The campaign will also provide legal assistance to candidates and their initiative groups.

The candidates approved by the CEC include Anna Kanapatskaya, a spoiler candidate who participated in the 2020 presidential campaign; Siarhei Bobrykau, chairman of the Belarusian Union of Officers; and Siarhei Syrankou, leader of the Communist Party of Belarus. The previously registered initiatives are those of Lukashenko and three other loyalists: Aleh Haidukevich, leader of the pro-Lukashenko Liberal Democratic Party; Alexander Hizhnyak, leader of the Republican Party; and a former spokeswoman of the Interior Ministry, Olga Chemodanova.

Lukashenko has stated that he considers the nomination of his supporters to be dictated by the desire to “secure” him. “I’m sure they just want to flank me here, to keep me safe, no more, no less. Well, I would like it that way,” Lukashenko told a state-owned TV channel.

RFE/RL political analyst Valer Karbalevich has written that “the nomination of several candidates, apart from Lukashenko, is designed to create the illusion that the current campaign is no different from the previous ones.” Belarus has not had any free or fair elections since Lukashenko came to power in 1994. During mass protests in 2020, the Belarusian regime relied heavily on Russia’s support to quell domestic unrest.

Meanwhile, independent election observers will attempt to monitor the conduct of the “election” from afar due to restrictions on their presence in Belarus. The Belarusian Helsinki Committee and Human Rights Center Viasna have established the “Human Rights Activists for Free Elections” campaign to gather information from publicly available sources. The campaign will also provide legal assistance to candidates and their initiative groups.

The campaign will operate remotely, as independent election observation is impossible on site due to the political terror and repressions unleashed by the Lukashenko regime, which has outlawed all but four loyal parties, jailed Lukashenko’s main political opponents along with around 1,300 people, now considered to be political prisoners, and eliminated 1,700 non-profit organizations.

“Conducting a free and open election campaign is impossible in a situation of political terror,” the campaign said in its first election report.

“It seems that the only role of the remaining registered candidates is to formally demonstrate the presence of an alternative in the 2025 elections, but not to overshadow the main candidate or even create the illusion of competition,” says the campaign’s lawyer, Sviatlana Halauniova.

The registered initiative groups have until Dec. 6 to gather over 100,000 signatures for their candidates to enter the race. The process of gathering signatures will occur at a time when repression still haunts those who signed for alternative candidates in 2020, Polish-backed news outlet Belsat reports. Employees at government agencies, banks, military enterprises, and plants were fired for supporting Lukashenko’s opponents.

“It is such a sometimes invisible process that it is impossible to evaluate,” Viasna’s Pavel Sapelka told Belsat. “We know about the phenomenon, but we cannot estimate its scale,” he said.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who claimed to have beaten Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, has denounced the elections as an “imitation” and “non-elections.” Her office has called on supporters to protest against the rigged elections by voting against all.

Other voices in the exiled opposition have called for a full boycott or consolidated voting for one of the spoiler candidates. Still, in the absence of a fair vote count, the effectiveness of either strategy would be hard to prove, political analyst Artsiom Shraibman suggests.