MINSK, Belarus ? Belarus held Parliamentary elections on Sunday, though the outcome was hardly in doubt: supporters of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko have traditionally won, and now hold, all 110 seats in the chamber.
But there was some uncertainty surrounding the circumstances of the balloting.
The campaign has provided the first broad interaction between Belarus and international observers since a presidential election went badly awry here in 2010, ending in police beatings and mass arrests. The European Union in response imposed a travel ban on Mr. Lukashenko and 100 or so senior members of his government, the lifting of which now depends in part on the observer?s assessment of Sunday?s election, the results of which are not expected before Monday.
Opponents of Mr. Lukashenko, always a mercurial figure, say his modest steps to ease election rules since 2010 are nothing more than window dressing, and that the country, its eccentric leader and his dictatorial form of government remain dismally backward and an embarrassment for Europe.
In a sign of these deep troubles, soon after the last national election in Belarus, Irina Khalyp, the wife of the leading opposition candidate, awoke one morning to the greeting ?Behold, the first lady of Belarus is getting up!?
The fellow inmates in her prison were, of course, joking. She was peeling herself off a lower plank in a bunk bed.
?We?re just falling into an abyss? politically, said Ms. Khalyp, who was released from prison last year but remains under house arrest. Authorities in 2010 also threatened to put her son into foster care. In April, they released her husband, Andrei Sannikov.
Mr. Lukashenko?s often absurd outbursts ? this spring he said it was ?better to be a dictator than gay? ? casts rule in a cartoonish tinge. So has police behavior. When protesters resorted to flash mobs, clapping or eating ice cream in a group, police began to arrest people for clapping and eating ice cream.
But for dissidents like Ms. Khalyp, even small changes in election practices, the most that is hoped for in this vote, are pivotally important.
Two opposition parties, the Belarus Popular Front and United Civil Party, withdrew from the election last week and called for a boycott. The government, perhaps in response, subsidized delicious spreads of potato pancakes, pastries and sausages at buffets set up in the foyers of many polling sites.
By mid-afternoon on a drizzly election day in Minsk, turnout passed the 50 percent mark needed for the vote to be declared valid. Voters even tramped into one polling station, No. 85, to dutifully check the single name on the ballot. They could vote ?yes? or ?no.?
Mr. Lukashenko, at a news conference, even embraced the idea that Belarus has boring elections. ?Those who say our elections are boring, well, let them envy us,? he said. ?Elections in a civilized society, in a civilized country, should be exactly this way.?
Mr. Lukashenko voted with one arm looped around his son Kolya, who wore a matching suit, in keeping with Mr. Lukashenko?s practice of often appearing in public with his son in identical outfits. He calls the boy, whose mother is not publicly identified, ?my talisman.? In a preliminary assessment, the observer mission, from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, noted improvements in Belarusian election law.. Officials eased the rules for forming initiative groups, something candidates need to legally gather the signatures necessary to get on the ballot. Surprisingly, many opposition figures were allowed to collect signatures.
Electoral commissions, though, eventually threw out about half these applications on technicalities. The improvement was in the easing of this first step.
European Union officials have recently shifted their emphasis to election law and away from political prisoners, not wanting to encourage Mr. Lukashenko to hold dissidents as bargaining chips. By different assessments, from 11 to 14 people incarcerated in Belarus now are political prisoners, including one candidate in the 2010 elections.
Ms. Khalyp, her green eyes blazing intensely, has objected to this stance, as have other former prisoners and relatives, saying the bloc is abandoning prisoners. ?When there are hostages, what else is there to talk about?? she said. ?Every one is a personal tragedy.?
The European Commission has scheduled a ministerial-level review of the visa ban a month after the election. ?It is not a negotiation: you give me this, I give you that,? said Matteo Mecacci, the head of the O.S.C.E. observer mission here. ?It is not something we negotiate.?
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