Assad triumphant in Syria’s wartime presidential election
Print Edition
SYRIAN President Bashar Assad has secured a landslide victory in a wartime election that demonstrated his popularity and influence after three years of brutal civil war.
Parliamentary speaker Mohammad al-Laham said Assad secured 88.7 percent of votes cast in the election, which was held mainly in the central and western parts of the country, where his forces hold sway.
“I declare the victory of Dr Bashar Hafez al-Assad as president of the Syrian Arab Republic with an absolute majority of the votes cast in the election,” Laham said in a televised address from his office in the Syrian parliament.
Even before he spoke, celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Damascus in anticipation of the news.
Nearly an hour after the announcement, heavy shooting could still be heard, despite an appeal by the victorious Assad that “joy and enthusiasm” could not justify the danger caused by the celebratory fire.
State television showed crowds cheering and dancing in Damascus, Qamishli in the Kurdish northeast of the country, the Druze city of Suweida in the south and the contested city of Aleppo in the north.
Syria’s constitutional court earlier said that turnout in Tuesday’s election and a previous round of voting for Syrian expatriates and refugees stood at 73 percent.
Assad’s foes have ridiculed the election, saying the two relatively unknown and state-approved challengers offered no real alternative to Assad.
Former minister Hassan al-Nouri got 4.3 percent of the vote while parliamentarian Maher Hajjar secured 3.2 percent — a share that was less than the number of spoilt ballots.
Syrian officials had described the predicted victory as vindication of Assad’s three-year campaign against the rebels and a landmark for democracy — the first time in half a century that Syria has held a contested presidential election.
For many Syrians voting on Tuesday, politics took second place to the yearning for stability and security after three devastating years of conflict which grew out of the mass protests in 2011 against Assad’s rule.
For the country’s minority Alawite, Christian and Druze communities, the Alawite president offers a bulwark against increasingly radical Sunni Muslim insurgents and the promise of a return to stability.
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