Bashar al-Assad wins the Syrian election as the world watches in disbelief
The least surprising news of the week from Syria is that Bashar al-Assad has won another seven-year term, says PhD candidate Ali Aljasem in an article for . He points out the lack of democratic legitimacy of the Assad regime that has led to this outcome.
Dictatorship
Although Syria鈥檚 minister of the interior, Mohammad Khaled al-Rahmoun, has said that more than eighteen million people had been eligible to vote, it has been estimated that thirteen million of those eligible would have been unable to cast their ballots. 鈥淭he election has been widely criticized,鈥 explains Aljasem. He states that Syria has, to all intents and purposes, become a dictatorship. Though there was initial hope for a 鈥榖reak from the past鈥 when Assad became head of state in 2000, this hope was swiftly quelled when he moved to restrict freedom of speech and other political expression.
Lack of democracy
Though the Assad regime has been called in to question before, Aljasem states that it is striking that this was more for its use of violence and the perpetration of war crimes than for its lack of democratic legitimacy. 鈥淭his year鈥檚 elections were held according to Syria鈥檚 2012 constitution, which stipulates that presidential candidates have to have been living in Syria for the past ten years, be Muslims and be endorsed by at least 35 of the 250 members of the parliament,鈥 he explains. But 177 of the members are affiliated with the party of Assad, which suggests that the chance of anyone else winning the election was pretty much non-existent.