Syrian President Bashar al-Assad secured a landslide victory in a wartime election that was condemned as a sham by his opponents, but demonstrated his tenacious hold on power after three years of brutal civil war.
Syrian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad al-Laham said al-Assad secured 88.7 percent of the 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,” al-Laham said in a televised address from his office in the Syrian parliament on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP
Even before he spoke, celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Damascus in anticipation of the news. Three people were killed in the capital and 10 were wounded by the gunfire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
State-run 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.
Al-Assad’s foes have ridiculed the election, saying the two relatively unknown and state-approved challengers offered no real alternative to al-Assad. Former minister Hassan al-Nouri got 4.3 percent of the vote, while lawmaker Maher Hajjar secured 3.2 percent, fewer than the number of spoiled ballots.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday repeated his call for a political resolution to the Syrian crisis and his country’s support for an inclusive political transition, and offered to boost aid for Syrian refugees.
“China respects the reasonable demands of the Syrian people, and supports the early adoption of the Geneva communique and the opening of an inclusive political process to bring about a political resolution to the Syrian issue,” Xi told a China-Arab forum in Beijing, in a speech broadcast live on state television.
Xi said US$16 million in humanitarian assistance would go to displaced Syrians sheltering in neighboring countries, such as Jordan and Lebanon.
Additional reporting by AP
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