Syria’s Assad gets 95% votes to secure fourth presidential term
On the eve of the election, the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy said the poll was “neither free nor fair”
DAMASCUS/MOSCOW: Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected for a fourth term as president of war-ravaged Syria, official results showed on Thursday, despite Western accusations the polls were “neither free nor fair”.
The controversial vote extending Assad’s stranglehold on power was the second since the start of a decade-long civil conflict that has killed more than 388,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure.
The parliamentary speaker announced on Thursday that Assad garnered 95.1% of the votes cast, trouncing two virtually unknown challengers.
Standing against him were former state minister Abdallah Salloum Abdallah and Mahmud Merhi, a member of the so-called “tolerated opposition”, long dismissed by exiled opposition leaders as an extension of the regime.
On the eve of the election, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy said the poll was “neither free nor fair”, and Syria’s fragmented opposition has called it a “farce”.
But few doubted that the 55-year-old Assad, an ophthalmologist by training, would be re-elected.
In the last multi-candidate poll in 2014, Assad won 88%.
Huge election posters glorifying Assad had mushroomed across the two-thirds of the country under his control in the lead-up to Wednesday’s poll.
Before the election results were announced, tens of thousands of Syrians gathered on Thursday in various cities to celebrate, waving Syrian flags and carrying pictures of Assad, state media reported.
The festivities broke out after the election committee, quoted by local TV, said “the ballot counting process has been completed in the majority of Syrian provinces”.
The UN’s Syria envoy, Geir Pedersen, noted the polls were not held under the political transition called for by security council resolution 2254 which provides for free and fair elections.
“What is required is a Syrianled and -owned political solution, facilitated by the United Nations and backed by constructive international diplomacy,” he said.
In rebel-held northwestern Syria, home to three million people, hundreds took to the streets to protest on Wednesday, an AFP correspondent said. They carried posters saying: “No legitimacy for Assad and his elections.”
Russia, China back Assad
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday congratulated ally President Assad on his re-election, saying it confirmed his “high political authority” in the war-torn country.
China too on Friday congratulated President Assad for winning a fourth term.
“China and Syria are traditional good friends,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press briefing in Beijing, as he extended the Asian giant’s well-wishes to Assad.
“China firmly supports Syria in its safeguarding of its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity,” he added.