What if assad wins

Rallies with thousands of people waving Syrian flags and holding pictures of Assad while singing and dancing took place all day Thursday in celebration of the election. The vote was boycotted by the U. Assad was running against two obscure candidates, former deputy Cabinet minister Abdallah Saloum Abdallah and Mahmoud Ahmed Marei, head of a small, officially sanctioned opposition party. Abdullah also made a bold promise to tackle corruption, which is systemic in Syria.

An amnesty earlier this month for more than civil servants, judges, lawyers and journalists detained in a crackdown on social media dissent has been widely viewed by rights activists and the loved ones of tens of thousands of detainees still missing in regime prisons as lip-service to democratic norms before the poll. We still have no idea if he is alive or dead. Ghazi agrees: for the regime, he said, the election is a useful propaganda tool. Almost no one was wearing a face mask, though Syria is facing a surge of coronavirus cases.

The election is likely to offer little change to conditions in Syria. While Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran, may be seeking a new seal of legitimacy for the president in office since , his re-election is likely to deepen the rift with the West, driving him closer to Russian and Iranian backers as well as China.

Sections U. Science Technology Business U. More than Assad was up against two little-known challengers, Abdullah Salloum Abdullah, former state minister of parliamentary affairs, and Mahmoud Ahmad Marei, the head of the National Democratic Front, a small, state-endorsed opposition party.

They were the only approved candidates of the 31 who applied for nomination. A statement from the Quint said:. But legitimacy has a questionable factor of every Syrian election since the coup, in which the Ba'ath Party first took power and excluded all rivals. Syria became to all intents and purposes a hereditary dictatorship. After the death of Hafez al-Assad in June , his son Bashar al-Assad succeeded him as party leader and head of state.