Kuwait Times

Published Date: May 30, 2007

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad won 97.62 percent of the vote that anointed him to a second term in office, officials said yesterday. The 41-year-old president was the only candidate allowed to put his name forward in the electoral procedures leading to Sunday's referendum, which was boycotted by the opposition and widely regarded as a formality. "This great consensus shows the political maturity of Syria and the brilliance of our democracy and multi-party system," Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majeed said at a news conference to declare the results. "There has been some repetition of votes but we caught them by reviewing the voting lists," Majeed said in response to a question about the possibility of vote-tampering.

Only 19,635 voters said "No" to Assad's re-election, while some 253,000 ballots were considered invalid.  But Maamoun Homsi, a well-known Syrian dissident living in Lebanon, dismissed the election results as a "forgery", saying in a statement in Beirut that the vote was a "blatant aggression on the minds, dignity and reputation of the Syrian people." Homsi, a former legislator, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and imprisoned in Damascus for five years for dissent. He fled after his release from prison last year to Lebanon, where has been a vocal critic of the Syrian regime.

In a mock gesture ahead of Sunday's vote, he had announced his own candidacy for the Syrian presidency.  Victory celebrations in Syria had been going on ever since the Parliament, which is dominated by a pro-government Baathist coalition, unanimously nominated the 42-year-old Assad on May 10 for another term. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians, in white caps and T-shirts bearing Assad's picture, beat drums and danced in the streets of Damascus yesterday to celebrate the re-election. The also swarmed outside the presidential palace to congratulate the president. Assad, a British-educated ophthalmologist, became president shortly after the death of his father, President Hafez Assad, in 2000. In his first referendum, he received 97.29 percent approval.

Parliament, which is dominated by the ruling Baath Party, held a session late yesterday to ratify the results. "I declare Bashar Al-Assad president for a second seven-year term starting on July 17. Only Bashar deserved a yes for leading Syria to victory," Speaker Mahmoud Al-Abrash told the chamber. All 250 members of parliament, called the Council of the People, rose and chanted "Syria has only God and Bashar". Earlier Assad greeted crowds of mostly students and state employees who came to congratulate him from the balcony of his office. The public appearance in the middle of the Syrian capital was almost unheard of in four decades of Baath Party rule.

Officials have made it clear that the ruling elite wanted the referendum to project a "modern and secure" image of Syria and Assad, partly through slogans tying his rule with stability in contrast to chaos in Iraq and political crisis in Lebanon. Assad won 97.29 percent of the vote when he succeeded his late father, Hafez Al-Assad, in 2000. One slogan popular during the elder Assad's rule was "Hafez Al-Assad for eternity and after eternity". Assad, who also controls the Baath Party, has kept the political system he inherited intact while slowly opening Syria's command economy.

A campaign started last year to crush dissent and several leading political activists were handed stiff jail sentences. The Baath, which was founded by Syrian intellectuals, took power in a coup in 1963, banned the opposition and imposed emergency law. Parties attached to the Baath are the only other political groups allowed to exist legally.

In Washington, the US State Department denounced the vote in unusually blunt terms. "I'm sure President Assad is basking in the glow of his ability to have defeated exactly zero other candidates and continue his misrule of Syria," spokesman Tom Casey said. "Clearly there was no real choice here for the Syrian people," he said. "You know, your choice is between vanilla, vanilla and vanilla and I don't think that's one that offers a variety of flavors and identities for the Syrian people to choose from." - Agencies