Syria votes in foreseeable elections

The explosion of a device near a polling station in Daraa was the most unexpected thing that happened on election day yesterday. there were no victims. Everything else was predictable: President and re-election candidate Bashar Assad going to vote surrounded by a cheering crowd, enthusiastic crowds going to the polls with the national flag tied around their necks, and a majority of Syrians ignorant of what was happening.. The result will not disappoint either: victory for Assad.

The networks showed alRais, and his wife Asma, proudly entering a polling station in the Damascene suburb of Duma.. It was an act full of symbolism, since this was the last place in the capital savagely besieged and under insurgent control -an extremist militia- until, after a chemical attack that left at least four dozen dead in April 2018, the rebels knelt. Casting the vote, the leader said that the opinion of the West on the elections counted “zero.”

This is how the President responded to the comments made by the White House Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The senior official spoke of “so-called presidential elections” that “are neither free nor fair”. Bashar Asad has ruled the country since 2000, when he succeeded his father, who rose to power through a military coup.. The son has run three times in elections and the percentage of votes in his favor has not dropped below 90%. For this vote, according to official media, there are 18 million voters.

This Wednesday, with voting centers open only in areas controlled by the Government -the northern strip, part of it in Kurdish hands and another area under Turkish influence-, those who went to the polls tried to show their best face. After checking their documents, they had to choose the ballot with the portrait of their favorite candidate -Asad or two tolerated opponents, Abdallah Saloum Abdallah and Mahmoud Ahmed Marei-. At the time of depositing the envelope, they could choose between making their vote public or keeping it secret.. Logically, as a correspondent for the Russian agency TASS was able to verify in a school in Damascus, the majority chose to show their vote: in Syria, hiding something makes you a suspect.

According to local media, riot police had to be fully used in some places to control the crowds that were queuing to vote.. Something similar had happened weeks before at the Syrian embassy in Beirut, one of the ones that opened for the more than six million Syrians who have left the country due to the war.. Opponents in exile call these acts a 'tour de force' with a propaganda spirit. In Lebanon, supporters and opponents of Assad ended up clashing in the streets.

Nothing to do with what was lived in the displacement camps, where hundreds of thousands of Syrians live without homes and without expectations and where the poverty suffered by Syria is noted with more aplomb. There were neither ballot boxes, nor votes, nor a solid perception that the expected re-election of Bashar Asad will change the course of their lives.. More than a decade after the outbreak of the conflict, with most of the population sunk below the poverty line, no vote is expected to change things.

“Assad's re-election for another seven years brings serious challenges for the Syrian economy. The Caesar sanctions, imposed by the US and signed by the EU, virtually cut off the flow of potential investment in Syria, as Washington can impose secondary sanctions on foreign companies that invest in the Syrian economy,” recalls Samuel Ramani, a Syrian policy researcher at oxford university. However, the expert clarifies, countries like Iran, Russia, China and even the United Arab Emirates, which has stopped supporting the opposition front, could dare to challenge the Western sanctions after the elections, which could serve to consolidate the military victory of Assad in the war. Similarly, Ramani believes, “I think it is possible that Saudi Arabia will normalize [its relations] with Syria during the legislature, and that Qatar will follow”. This could reopen the door to the Arab League for Syria, and would, most experts believe, be the final straw for the opposition movement. All this despite the fact that Syria is still formally engaged in a UN-sponsored process to draft a consensus constitution for Syria that would serve to put the war behind it.