page_title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election
section_title: Siarhei Tsikhanouski and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya
hierarchical_section_title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election / Campaign / Siarhei Tsikhanouski and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya
caption_attribution_description: Беларуская: Мітынг Святланы Ціханоўскай і аб'яднанага перадвыбарчага штаба. 30 ліпеня 2020, Мінск, Беларусь English: Rally in support of Sviatlana Tsikhanoŭskaya and the joint campaign headquarters. 30 July 2020, Minsk, Belarus Русский: Митинг Светланы Тихановской и объединённого предвыборного штаба. 30 июля 2020, Минск, Беларусь
context_page_description: Presidential elections were held in Belarus on Sunday, 9 August 2020. Early voting began on 4 August and ran until 8 August.
  The president was elected directly to serve for five years. Incumbent Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected to a sixth term in office, with official results crediting him with 80 percent of the vote. Lukashenko has won every presidential election since 1994, with all but the first being labelled by international monitors as neither free nor fair.
  Opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya claimed to have won a decisive first-round victory with at least 60 percent of the vote, and called on Lukashenko to start negotiations of transferring power. Meanwhile, Tsikhanouskaya's campaign team created a Coordination Council to facilitate a transfer of power. After announced the election results, the reaction of Belarus citizens continue with a "long-term peaceful protests" against them.
  All opposition candidates have filed appeals to the Central Election Commission of Belarus calling for the results to be invalidated. The election was marred by allegations of widespread electoral fraud.
context_section_description: On 7 May, Belarusian blogger and entrepreneur Syarhei Tsikhanouski has announced on his YouTube channel "Country for Life" that he intended to become a candidate in the presidential election. Prior to this event, on 6 May, he was detained by the Belarusian police in the vicinity of Mahilyow.
  The police officers refused to present identification (confirming that they were legitimate policemen) and threatened to break the windows of the car that Tsikhanouski was in. Prior to that, a crowd of Tsikhanouski's supporters in Mahilyow released a member of Tsikhanouski's team from the police. A day later, allies of Tsikhanouski were arrested, including a blogger from Slutsk, Uladzimier Niaronski. The Tsikhanouski's team, including Niaronski, were chased by road police and two minivans with members of the police special forces AMAP.
  The blogger's arrest was due to his trips around the Belarus that covered consequences of the Lukashenko’s 26-year tenure as a president. The Tsikhanouski trips were popular and gathered hundreds of people who spoke out to him about violations of human rights and economic problems. During these trips, Tsikhanouski and his team was constantly chased by cars with the people which were recording him and his activities, presumably they were employees of the Belarusian special services.
  After the Tikhanovski was arrested, his supporters held a series of protests across the Belarus. According to Radio Liberty, 20 to 30 people were detained in Homiel, which is Tsikhanouski's hometown. Viasna Human Rights Centre reported that at least 19 of his supporters were brutally detained in Minsk.
  After his arrest, Tsikhanouski was transported to Homiel, where he was placed in a temporary detention center. The formal reason for his detention was his participation in the rally against the integration of Belarus with Russia on 19 December 2019 in Minsk. After his detention, Tsikhanouski has announced on his YouTube channel his intention to run for president of Belarus. The video had recorded 250,000 views in 20 hours after the publication. The aforementioned YouTube channel had 276,000 subscribers as of 10 August. However, the Central Election Commission of Belarus refused to register the initiative group to nominate him.
  His spouse, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, decided to apply for election as a candidate, her initiative group was successfully registered by the Central Election Commission of Belarus. Tsikhanouski became the head of the initiative group to collect signatures for Tikhanovskaya's participation in the election.
  On 20 May, Tsikhanouski was released from the temporary detention center. He explained that the pressure of activist supporters helped to achieve it. In an interview with Tsikhanouski after his release, Deutsche Welle drew parallels between the Belarusian blogger and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the Ukrainian actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who became the president of Ukraine. RTVI also drew a parallel between Tsikhanouski and Navalny.
  Tsikhanouski then began travelling round the country to hold pickets in order to collect signatures for Tsikhanouskaya. Tsikhanouski's pickets were very popular and attracted thousands of people. The queue to the picket in Minsk near Kamarouski market was half a mile long. Several thousand people also attended the picket of Tsikhanouski in Homiel. Tsikhanouski announced that he was collecting signatures for fair election in Belarus.
  Tsikhanouski uses the slogan "Stop the cockroach!" in his campaign, which is chanted by his supporters. The symbol of the campaign is a slipper. The slogan "Stop the cockroach!" refers to the fairy tale "Cockroach" by Soviet poet Kornei Chukovsky about how a "moustached cockroach" intimidated all the animals and became their ruler. Apparently, this slogan is a reference to the current leadership of Belarus. Slippers are supposedly a traditional means of pest control. Euronews journalists called the events in Belarus the "Slipper Revolution", demonstrating the quote of the Belarusian activist Franak Viačorka with this phrase.
  On 29 May
caption: Rally in support of Tsikhanouskaya in Minsk on 30 July 2020
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot G9 X Mark II", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 8.2 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2020:07:30 22:35:33", "Image ExifOffset": "230", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "894", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "21939", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1000", "EXIF FNumber": "49/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "125", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2020:07:30 18:39:29", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2020:07:30 18:39:29", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1245723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4585563/1000000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "147/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "153/5", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "70", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "70", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "135838255/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "135838255/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "633052003811", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[51/5, 153/5, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "10.2-30.6 mm"}