Four previous days of early voting for students, armed service staff and police resulted in at a voter turnout of at least 19%, according to the election commission.

[5] Following the 2010 presidential election and the consequent arrests of activists and candidates, including Andrei Sannikov and Vladimir Neklyayev were reportedly absent from the political limelight.

The UCP posted a video on YouTube that showed its activists picking mushrooms, playing chess and reading books as an alternative to voting.

In turn, opposition activists accused the government of inducing higher education students to vote sometimes under the threat of losing subsidies for accommodation.

In the week prior to the election, state security police broke up gatherings of activists that had sought to urge potential voters to cook borshch instead, while several of them were arrested along with media photographers.

Vitaly Rymashevsky, the co-chairman of the Belarus Christian Democracy party, said: "The election commission is unscrupulously lying as these figures are so radically different from those of observers."