MINSK, March 20 (RIA Novosti) - Monitors from the world's largest regional security grouping said Monday that Sunday's presidential election in Belarus, which saw President Alexander Lukashenko reelected for a third time in a landslide win, failed to meet accepted democratic standards.
"The March 19 presidential election did not meet the required international standards for free and fair elections," Alcee Hastings, a U.S. congressman who chairs the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's parliamentary assembly, told a news conference in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
According to election officials, former collective farm boss Lukashenko, who Washington has dubbed the last dictator in Europe, romped home with 82.6% of the votes. Despite criticism in the West for authoritarian tendencies, Lukashenko is known to have support in his homeland for providing relative economic stability in comparison with other former Soviet states.
Earlier Monday, observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose association of former Soviet states, said the poll was "fair and open."
But Hastings appeared to disagree with this assessment, saying, "Democracy in Belarus is in its infancy."
Hastings criticized the incumbent authorities for failing to ensure that observers could monitor the voting, and added that the candidates had not been provided with a level playing field.
He also highlighted media control and intimidation, which echoed a statement from the European Union that the poll had been conducted in a "climate of intimidation."
More than 500 OSCE monitors from 38 countries attended the vote and are expected to submit a final report in six to eight weeks.
