Voters are reported to be lining up at polling stations in Syria to vote in a presidential election which President Bashar al Assad is widely expected to win. The fact of the election was denounced as illegitimate in a joint statement issued by the U.S. State Department and signed by the Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, because it is being held outside the framework called for in UN Security Council resolution 2254.
What they are really angry about is that the election will not result in the regime change that the U.S. and its allies have been trying to engineer for a decade.
“As outlined in the Resolution, free and fair elections should be convened under UN supervision to the highest international standards of transparency and accountability. For an election to be credible, all Syrians should be allowed to participate, including internally displaced Syrians, refugees, and members of the diaspora, in a safe and neutral environment,” the ministers said. “Without these elements, this fraudulent election does not represent any progress towards a political settlement.” However, these same ministers, for the most part, have done everything to prevent rebuild the country such as to allow refugee and IDP Syrians from returning to their homes to live, work, go to school—and vote!
Assad dismissed the statement, saying this morning that most of those nations “have colonial history,” and “we as a state are not concerned about such statements.” The election is being held in government-controlled areas of the country. In the northeast, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Council has refused to allow the placement of ballot boxes in areas it controls because it has aligned itself with the U.S. position. There are two other candidates in the election but their participation is seen, at least in the trans-Atlantic sphere, as symbolic.
