There is an interesting article in the Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor, which claims that President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus has admitted rigging the result of the 2006 presidential election.

In an article that apparently appeared in Izvestiya at the end of August, Lukashenka is reported as saying that he did not, in fact, win 83% of the vote at the election. Instead, he claims that he won more than this amount, but that he ordered the official figures to underestimate his support in order to make them appear more realistic! He says that he actually won about 93% of the vote.

The article recalls that certain pre-election opinion polls were putting Lukashenka’s support at about 50-60%. So, there is a strongly ironic tone in the article, which might be expected from this source. Whatever about the tone, the report still conveys nicely the air of unreality that surrounds any president who thinks that reporting a figure of 83% will make support for him look realistic in a supposed democracy.