Syrian President Bashar Assad has been re-elected in a landslide, officials said yesterday, effectively ensuring another seven-year term in the middle of a vicious, 3-year-old rebellion against his rule that has devastated the country.
Syria’s parliament speaker, Jihad Laham, announced the final results from Tuesday’s election, saying Assad garnered 10,319,723 votes, or 88.7 percent. Assad’s two challengers, Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, won 4.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively. The Supreme Constitutional Court put turnout at 73.42 percent.
Damascus erupted into a thunderous, roll of celebratory gunfire that appeared to include heavy weaponry after the results were announced. Thousands of Assad supporters flocked the streets to celebrate, some waving large Syrian flags and others carrying photos of Assad as car horns blared. Some men broke into the familiar pro-Assad chant: “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, Bashar!”
News networks aired live footage from the government stronghold of Latakia and the war-ravaged city of Homs (which the government recaptured last month) showing crowds upon crowds of people celebrating with flags and posters of Assad amid cries of “God, Syria, Bashar!” Fireworks lit up the night sky in Latakia.
Voting was held only in government-controlled areas, excluding huge tracks of northern and eastern Syria that are in rebel hands. Tens of thousands of Syrians abroad voted last week, although many of the more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees across the region either abstained or were excluded by law.
Assad’s hold on power was not always so secure. Just over a year ago, his grip was slipping as vast swaths of the country fell to the increasingly confident rebels. But Assad’s troops bolstered by allies Iran, Russia and the Lebanese Shiite militant Hezbollah managed over the past year to turn the tide.
For the first time in decades, there were multiple candidates on Syria’s presidential ballot. In previous elections, Assad, and before him his father, Hafez Assad, were elected in single-candidate referendums in which voters cast yes-no ballots. In both Syria’s 2000 and 2007 elections, Assad garnered 97 percent yes votes.
The government has portrayed this vote as a democratic solution to Syria’s conflict, however Syria’s rebels remain adamant in their fight to oust Assad and show no inclination towards any sort of compromise.
In Beirut, Kerry sharply criticized the Syrian election, calling it “a great big zero.” It can’t be considered fair, he said, “because you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote.”
“Nothing has changed from the day before the election and the day after. Nothing,” Kerry said during a one-day visit Wednesday to the Lebanese capital. “The conflict is the same, the terror is the same, the killing is the same.”
The European Union joined the U.S. in condemning the election, saying in a statement that “it cannot be considered as a genuinely democratic vote.”
The delegation of officials from more than 30 countries, including legislators and dignitaries from Iran, Russia and Venezuela, toured polling stations on Tuesday. In a final statement read yesterday by Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s Committee on National Security, the delegation blamed the U.S and its allies for “crimes committed against the Syrian people.”
Delegation member Alexey Alexandrov, a Russian senator, told reporters in Damascus that the elections assured “Assad’s legitimacy and mean he cannot be removed in a military operation.”
“I am sure that the elections that happened in Syria were done according to all the principles of democracy and international law,” said Alexandrov.
