Voters urged to boycott Belarus election

MINSK, Belarus (CNN) -- A general election is being held in Belarus, despite an opposition boycott and criticism by the West that it is undemocratic.

Voting began on Sunday morning with the 10 million people in the former Soviet republic being asked to choose a new lower house of parliament. More than 550 candidates are competing for 110 seats.

It is the first parliamentary election since President Alexander Lukashenko -- the last communist-style ruler in Europe -- dissolved the previous legislature in 1996 and replaced it with lawmakers loyal to him.

But pro-reformers have branded the election a farce and urged people not to vote. More than half of the electorate must take part for the election to be declared valid.

Opinion polls indicate that 60 percent of people do intend to vote with around two-thirds likely to support candidates loyal to Lukashenko.

CNN's Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty said the opposition was not allowed equal access to the media during the campaign and even before the first vote was cast, the West made it clea it considered the whole exercise undemocratic.

She said the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is not sending international observers and the U.S. State Department has already said it will not recognise the result.

Lukashenko is said to see the poll as a rehearsal for next year's presidential election.

He was given a boost on Saturday evening when an opposition rally, calling for a boycott, attracted fewer people than had been expected.

Only a few thousand people joined the march in the centre of the capital Minsk, well below the tens of thousands the organisers had been hoping for to put pressure on Lukashenko.

The president, who says Belarussians are "communal and socialist" and want stability, has threatened to crack down on the opposition to avoid a popular uprising like that which forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to step down.

"There is no confrontation in our country -- neither racial nor religious. There are no wars on our land," Lukashenko told a group of senior officials from European organisations. "Name another post-Soviet state which can boast the same values."

Voting started at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) and ends at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT). Preliminary results are expected by the early hours of Monday morning.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Belarus National Assembly

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