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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

I imagine all leaders share some traits no matter how good, evil, or truly monstrous they are. The reality is, however, that Americans can vote their leader out of office in a couple of years while in Belarus they just cannot.

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Of course they can. They just chose to re-elect him. Belarus is a democratic republic with proper election system.

It's not hard to choose when there's only 1 real candidate. USSR had elections too.

There were 4 candidates on the last elections. More than in US, AFAIK.

Like it means something, there was just one controlling counting of votes. Sorry, even his fans here in Belarus don't take 'elections' seriously.

Every election in Belarus in the last couple of decades is a circus. Lukashenko rules for 23 years now having complete control over elections.

The US had scores of candidates, if you think it's any useful metric.

http://www.politics1.com/p2016.htm

There are effectively no elections held in Belarus since 1994. Any true contenders are crushed and imprisoned, and the votes aren't counted either way.

It is not about the number of candidates and freedom of choice. A true democracy needs its own Guantanamo (US) and citizens of 1st and 2nd classes (Estonia, Latvia). And the most important factor is who is your friend because these friends will eventually decide who you are. There were many classical dictatorships which were treated as democracies and vice versa.

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