Syrians Are Going for Elections Despite Terrorist Threats & Shameful Western Behavior (+Video Report)

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Syrians Are Going for Elections Despite Terrorist Threats & Shameful Western Behavior (+Video Report)

‘It’s our right!’ Syria votes for president in controversial election amid civil war

Polling station across war-torn Syria have opened for the first multi-candidate presidential election in more than 40 years. Despite loud calls in and outside the country to boycott the vote, many Syrians still want their voices to be heard.

Over 9,000 polling stations have been set up in government-controlled areas of Syria for some 15 million eligible voters. But not everyone will be able to cast their ballots, as rebel-held regions in northern and eastern Syria won’t take part in the election.

The inability to hold a truly nationwide vote in a country where the bloody civil war still rages is one reason opponents of the current authorities in Syria have described the election as a sham.

Another bit of criticism is that the Syrians have not been given an opportunity to make a genuine choice. President Bashar Assad is challenged only by two relatively-unknown government-approved candidates, and is expected to win comfortably.

A Syrian woman casts her ballot as she votes in presidential election on June 3, 2014 at Bassel al-Assad school turned into a polling station in central Damascus (AFP Photo / Louai Beshara)

The head of the main opposition group uniting 12 fractions in and outside Syria, Hassan Abdul Azim, doesn’t believe Tuesday’s vote will change anything.

A candidate should get the support of 30 percent of the people’s assembly – the body elected by authorities,” Azim told RT. “Which means there is no challenge, no change. It’s a parliament again, and there can’t be any opponent. This is why it’s formal, and illegitimate. This is why we reject it.”

There has also been an online campaign in Syria for boycotting elections. Several groups on Facebook have been calling on people not to vote for those “responsible for the bloody conflict.” RT’s Maria Finoshina, reporting from Damascus, has however come across many election supporters in the streets of the Syrian capital. This is our duty, we can’t allow people from outside to decide for us. Our duty is to vote – in order to protect our country,” says Usam Hammami, a Damascus resident. Ali Neezam, a nut shop assistant gets emotional:

“Even if there are mortar bombs like the terrorists promise us, we’ll go and vote for Bashar Assad. This is our right!”

Rustam Chehayed, a Syrian citizen, who took refuge in Italy three years ago, when the unrest started, returned to Damascus to cast his ballot in the country’s presidential election. He does not understand why the West embraced the election in Ukraine, despite military actions there, yet called for a boycott of the poll in Syria. The Italian government prevents us from voting, it deprives us from our right,” Chehayed told RT.

“You can’t vote at the embassy there! I believe Syria’s future should be decided by the Syrian people not but other countries’ governments.”

Countries like France, Germany and Belgium, as well the United Arab Emirates, have also prevented Syrians from voting at their embassies. Some, like political writer and journalist Dan Glazebrook, sense double standards in the Western countries’ approach to the Syrian elections.

“It really shows the contempt that the Western countries have for democracy,” Glazebrook told RT. “They have been calling for democracy in Syria for years, and when the elections take place they not only denounced them, but actually banned Syrians from taking part in them.”

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REUTERS: "Syrians vote in wartime election set to extend Assad's rule"

Added At: 2014-06-03 6:35 PM Last Updated At: 2014-06-03 6:35 PM

Reuters

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma cast their votes in the country's presidential elections at a polling station in Damascus June 3, 2014.

REUTERS

DAMASCUS: Syrians voted on Tuesday in an election expected to deliver anoverwhelming victory for President Bashar al-Assad but which his opponents have dismissed as a charade in the midst of Syria's devastating civil war.

Rebel fighters, the political opposition in exile, Western powers and Gulf Arabs say no credible vote can be held in a country where swathes of territory are outside state control and millions have been displaced by conflict. State television showed long queues of people waiting to vote at polling stations in areas under state control, as well as crowds waving flags and portraits of the president. Assad, looking relaxed and wearing a dark blue suit and light blue tie, voted at a central Damascus polling station with his wife Asma.

For many Syrians politics took second place to the overriding yearning for stability after three years of war which have killed more than 160,000 people.

"We hope for security and stability," said Hussam al-Din al Aws, an Arabic teacher who was the first person to vote at a polling station at a Damascus secondary school. Asked who would win, he responded: "God willing, President Bashar al-Assad."

Islamist insurgents battling to overthrow the 48-year-old president, who has ruled Syria since succeeding his father 14 years ago, dismissed the vote as "illegitimate". But the Islamic Front pledged not to target polling stations "because we decided not to involve civilians in the conflict". It urged other rebels to do the same. Damascus residents said mortar shells struck residential areas in the capital on Tuesday, most likely fired from rebel suburbs. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Assad is running against two relatively unknown challengers who were approved by a parliament packed with his supporters, the first time in half a century that Syrians have been offered a choice of candidates.

But neither of Assad's rivals, former minister Hassan al-Nouri or parliamentarian Maher Hajjar, enjoys much support. "It's a tragic farce," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. "The Syrians in a zone controlled by the Syrian government have a choice of Bashar or Bashar. This man has been described by the U.N. Secretary General as a criminal," he told France 2 television.

"NATIONAL DUTY"

But for many Syrians exhausted by war, particularly the minority Alawite, Christian and Druze communities, the Alawite president offers a bulwark against radical Sunni Muslim insurgents and the promise - however remote - of some form of stability.

At the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, thousands of people stood in the sun in a tightly packed queue to vote at a polling station set up for Syrians inside Lebanon - despite warnings from the government in Beirut that any refugee who crossed back into Syria would lose their refugee status.

All those who spoke to Reuters said they planned to vote for Assad, giving him a third seven-year term.

"I came and made the decision to do this for the sake of myself and my country,” said Ghada Makki, 43. "It is a national duty to vote so that we overcome the crisis happening in Syria."

Some Damascus residents reported only a trickle of voters at polling stations in the centre of the city, but an activist who contacted people in Damascus and the Druze province of Suweida said the numbers of people voting was "scary". "Lots of people have gone to vote and I'm not talking about the shabbiha," he said, referring to pro-Assad militia.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, draped in a Syrian flag as he voted, dismissed the foreign criticism. "No one in this world can impose their will on the Syrian people," he said. "Today the path to a political solution begins".

"POLITICAL MESSAGE"

Syrian officials confidently predicted a big turnout and said that a high level of participation would be as significant as the result itself.

"The size of the turnout is a political message," Information Minister Omran Zoabi told Reuters on Monday night. "The armed terrorist groups have increased their threats because they fear (a high level of) participation," he said, referring to the rebels.

"If these terrorist groups had any popularity it would be enough to ensure the failure of the election," he said. "But they realise they have no popularity, so they want to affect the level of participation so they can say the turnout was low."

Tens of thousands of Syrian expatriates and refugees cast their ballots last week in an early round of voting, although the number was just a fraction of the nearly 3 million refugees and other Syrians living abroad. The election took place three years after protests first broke out in Syria, calling for democratic reform in a country dominated since 1970 by the Assad family.

Authorities responded with force and the uprising descended into civil war. Assad's forces, backed by allies including Iran and Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah, have consolidated their control in central Syria but the insurgents and foreign jihadi fighters hold broad expanses of northern and eastern Syria.

Peace talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition National Coalition, which the opposition said must be based on the principle of Assad stepping aside in favour of a transitional government, collapsed in February. Since then Assad's forces and Hezbollah fighters have seized back control of former rebel strongholds on the Lebanese border, cutting off supply lines for weapons and fighters, and the last rebels have retreated from the centre of the city of Homs.

The withdrawal from Homs has focused attention on the northern city of Aleppo, formerly Syria's commercial hub, where fighting has escalated in the last few weeks. Rebel rocket fire on government-controlled areas of Aleppo killed 50 people over the weekend, while barrel bombs dropped by army helicopters on rebel-held areas of Aleppo have killed nearly 2,000 people this year, a monitoring group said.

State media said on Monday that a car bomb killed at least 10 people in Homs province.

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