Syrians head to polls set to extend Assad’s rule

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

DAMASCUS // Syrians voted on Tuesday in an election expected to deliver an overwhelming victory to President Bashar Al Assad.

The controversial election comes in the midst of a three-year civil war that has fractured the country and killed more than 160,000 people.

Mr Assad’s opponents – including rebel fighters, the political opposition in exile, Western powers and Gulf Arabs – have dismissed the election as a charade, saying no credible vote can be held in a country where wide swathes of territory are outside state control and millions of people have been displaced.

Insurgents battling to overthrow Mr Assad stepped up attacks in government-controlled areas in the build-up to the election, seeking to disrupt the vote.

Polling stations opened at 7 am local time in parts of Syria where Mr Assad continues to rule and state television broadcast footage of people queuing to cast their votes in several cities.

“We hope for security and stability,” said Hussam Al Din, 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.”

Mr 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 any choice of candidates.

The last seven presidential votes were referendums to approve Mr Assad or his father, Hafez Al Assad.

His father never scored less than 99 per cent, while his son got 97.6 percent seven years ago.

Neither of Mr Assad’s rivals, former minister Hassan Al Nouri or parliamentarian Maher Hajjar, is expected to make major inroads into those levels of support.

Syrian officials have 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 said on Monday.

“The armed terrorist groups have increased their threats because they fear (a high level of) participation,” he said referring to anti-regime 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 comes 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 has since descended into civil war.

Mr 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 the north and east.

Peace talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition National Coalition, which the opposition said must be based on the principle of Mr Assad stepping aside in favour of a transitional government, collapsed in February.

Since then Mr 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.

* Reuters