Although undoubtedly elections in Belarus are not open to serious opposition, the western media's rush to judgement shows their pre-determined agenda

Propagandaschau. Translated from German by Paul Dunne This article originally appeared at. Translated from German by Paul Dunne

Andrei Hunko, MP of the German "Linke" ("Left") party, was in Belarus as an election monitor and reported on Facebook:

"Hello everyone from Baranovichi, Belarus. I have been travelling the whole day, observing the elections here. There were no irregularities or odd happenings at the polling stations, everything was above-board. The other international observers agree. Where the "Tagesschau" got their "many falsifications and violations" remains an mystery even after reading the article.

"Of course I am aware that there is plenty to criticise in Belarus, but after all summoning people to vote is something we do as well. The people here are not stupid, they can see what is happening e.g. to the south of them, in Ukraine. And therefore the rejection of those "regime-changers" prepared to use force, and the relatively high support for Lukashenko.

"Because the only opposition candidate worth taking seriously did not seek to distance himself in principle from this mood, he is labelled by SZ as "suspicious". How obnoxious!

"This simple-minded reporting on Belarus is hypocritical and certainly doesn't help the development of democracy and pluralism."

ZDF [a major German TV channel] reports in the programs "Heute" and "Heute-journal", without evincing any concrete facts or sources, that there were "significant problems at the vote counts". That could mean almost anything, and it is precisely this hinting without any facts that is intended; but it has nothing to do with serious journalism.

There are ever and again "significant problems" during elections in Germany. Whether the ballot papers put candidates from outside the parties at a disadvantage, as recently in Cologne; ballots are rigged, as in Bavaria; or an election is stolen by misleading the public, as in Dortmund: also in Germany significant problems with elections are current news and one can only speculate about what other manipulations we never get to hear about. While such events in Germany are dismissed as trivial or simply swept under the carpet, when reporting on other countries, whose governments it is desired to denigrate, they are made the main point of the reports.

ARD dug deeper in the propaganda barrel, and it is only necessary to listen for a short while to Markus Sambale on the radio to know that he is not interested in information, but defamation:

Sambale: "with projections, expert discussions and live reports the state TV guided the results of the presidential elections."

A ridiculous piece of hypocrisy, for one could say just the same of Germany. Furthermore, voices for hire like Sambale "stage" the US presidential elections hour after hour on radio and TV, except that then there is no talk of "staging", but of "reporting the elections".

Sambale goes on to whine than an opposition candidate ("the only real one") received only a single-digit percent of the vote, and lies blatantly:

Sambale: "The election had not much to do with any sort of democratic process, on that independent election observers and experts are agreed."

Since we may presume that Andrey Hunko was not telling lies, but did in fact observe the elections and report truthfully on what he had seen, it is clear that Sambale is a liar.

Sambale is in Moscow, and one suspects that he has was not once in Belarus during the election, but nevertheless he has the cheek to question the legitimacy of the election.

Sambale: "For Lukashenko, it is not enough to win the election," (note that this is hypocritical scandal-mongering -- of course every serious election candidate anywhere wants to win) "it must be also be seen as free and fair."

To put the cap on the pile of his propaganda bullshit, Sambale knows of "a dozen people who took to the streets". No doubt it would have been more to the liking of the anti-democrat and babbler Sambale when their candidate had won the election. Who cares about majorities? Sambale could not present any instances of or evidence for ballot-rigging. But it is evidently enough to defame an election as "undemocratic" when one of their voices for hire babbles some twaddle about such things.

Birgit Virnich came out with the same sort of nonsense on the evening of the election on "Der Tagesschau" [major TV news programme]. Again, nothing but defamatory, hypocritical babbling with no substance to it. She also made much of the "staging", without thereby producing a even a single concrete fact to illustrate how this might differ from similar "stagings" in the West.

When we go on to an interview with the anti-Russian war-monger Marie-Luise Beck, it is clear that the very last dregs of NATO had been let into the country to observe the elections. If even she cannot come up with the slightest evidence of ballot forgery or suppression, it should be evident that the great majority in Belarus do stand behind Lukashenko -- and precisely that is the real problem for the US propagandists of ARD and ZDF.