President
Bashar Al-Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for
over half a century, faces an election Wednesday meant to cement his image as
the only hope for recovery in the war-battered country, analysts say.
اضافة اعلان
His campaign slogan, “Hope through Work,” evokes the
reconstruction of a country ravaged by a decade-long conflict that has claimed
more than 388,000 lives and displaced half of
Syria’s pre-war population.
In the capital Damascus, Assad’s portraits line roads and inundate
main squares, outnumbering those of his two little-known challengers.
“Syrians will vote to pledge allegiance to Assad and to the
system,” said analyst Fabrice Balanche.
By holding elections on a regular basis, Assad is attempting
to prove “that Syrian institutions are functioning,” he said.
The poll, the second since the war started in 2011, is all
but certain to deliver a fourth term for a president already in power for 21
years.
Western countries opposed to Assad say the vote is a sham
and neither free nor fair — in part because it will be held exclusively in the
two thirds of the country under regime control.
Assad, a 55-year-old ophthalmologist by training, was first
elected by referendum in 2000 after the death of his father Hafez, who had
ruled Syria for 30 years.
In the May 26 ballot, he will run against two other
challengers approved by an Assad-appointed constitutional court, out of a total
of 51 applicants.
Electoral law stipulates that candidates need to have lived
in Syria continuously for at least the past decade, ruling out all exiled
opposition figures.
The two other contenders are former state minister Abdallah
Salloum Abdallah and Mahmoud Merhi — a member of the so-called “tolerated
opposition” long described by exiled opposition leaders as an extension of the
regime.
‘Only choice’
Assad issued a general amnesty for thousands of prisoners
earlier this month, on top of a series of decrees that aim to improve economic
conditions.
He has refrained from holding campaign media events and
interviews, but his team has released a widely shared promotional video ahead
of the polls.
It opens with footage of explosions and people fleeing
devastated neighborhoods, but then shifts to portray scenes of hope: inside a
classroom, a schoolteacher repairs a hole blown into the wall by artillery
fire. A farmer tends to his land. A timber mill is back in service.
“Bashar’s election campaign emphasizes his role as the man
who won a war [and] has big ideas for Syria’s reconstruction,” said Nicholas
Heras of the Newlines Institute in Washington.
It presents him as “the only person who can manage the
resumption of order and reconstruction from the chaos of the Syrian conflict.”
With more than 80 percent of Syria’s population living in
poverty, according to the UN, the country today is a far cry from the vision
Assad projected when he was first propelled to the presidency.
According to Heras, Assad’s campaign targets international
donors more than Syrian voters.
He is “running a long infomercial for potential foreign
backers that he is their only choice for stability after Syria’s war,” Heras
said.
‘Major setback’
Syria has lost its status as a regional heavyweight under
Assad’s watch and is now widely seen as heavily dependent on Russia, Iran and
an assortment of Tehran-backed militias, including the Lebanese Hezbollah
movement.
It remains to be seen whether Western countries led by
Washington will shift course on Damascus by lifting sanctions that have
crippled Syria’s economy.
But they are unlikely to make concessions without an
internationally brokered peace settlement, which they accuse Assad of
sabotaging.
According to experts, the May 26 vote undermines a
UN-sponsored committee set up in late 2019 to draft a new constitution for
Syria ahead of elections.
Representatives from the regime, the opposition and civil
society groups failed to clinch an agreement before the vote, derailing any
progress.
According to Syria expert Samuel Ramani, the election “will
be a major setback for the constitutional process.”
It “will reaffirm to the international community, Russia and
Iran included, just how difficult a settlement will be.”
In a country fragmented by war, Syria’s Kurds have carved
out a de facto autonomous zone in the northeast, where voting will be extremely
limited.
More than three million people live in Syria’s rebel-held
northwest, where the fighters say the election is illegitimate.
In the last multi-candidate poll in 2014, Assad won with 88 percent
of the vote.
This time around, “Assad is running the risk of being the
only certainty in a country in ruins,” said a European diplomat following
Syrian affairs.
But Assad will have a lot to prove, more so to his closest
allies than his foes, according to the diplomat.
“Without reform and without opening up the regime,” he has
few chances of success, the diplomat said.
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