Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected for a fourth term as president ofwar-ravaged Syria, official results showed on Thursday.
Areas controlled by rebels or Kurdish-led troops did not hold the vote, andover five million refugees who are mainly living in neighbouring countrieslargely chose not to cast their ballots, reported foreign media.
The controversial vote extending Assad’s stranglehold on power was thesecond since the start of a decade-long civil conflict that has killed morethan 388,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’sinfrastructure.
The parliamentary speaker announced Thursday that Assad garnered 95.1percent of the votes cast, trouncing two virtually unknown challengers.
The president wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page: “Thank you to allSyrians for their high sense of nationalism and their notableparticipation… For the future of Syria’s children and its youth, let’sstart from tomorrow our campaign of work to build hope and build Syria.”
Assad had faced symbolic competition from two candidates, former deputycabinet minister Abdallah Saloum Abdallah and Mahmoud Ahmed Marei, the headof a small, officially sanctioned opposition party.
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The win will give the 55-year-old seven more years in power, stretching hisfamily’s rule to almost six decades.
His father, Hafez al Assad, was the country’s leader until his death in2000.
On the eve of the election, the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy saidthe poll was “neither free nor fair”, and Syria’s fragmented opposition hascalled it a “farce”.
Standing against him were former state minister Abdallah Salloum Abdallahand Mahmud Merhi, a member of the so-called “tolerated opposition”, longdismissed by exiled opposition leaders as an extension of the regime.
