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The
government says the election shows Syria is functioning normally
despite a decade-old conflict. The fighting has killed hundreds
of thousands of people and driven 11 million people - about half
the country's population - from their homes.
"Syria is not what they were trying to market, one city against
the other and sect against the other or civil war, today we are
proving from Douma that the Syrian people are one," Assad said
after voting.
The election went ahead independently of a U.N.-led peace
process that had called for polls under international
supervision that would help pave the way for a new constitution
and a political settlement.
The opposition, which is boycotting the vote, says Assad's
presidential rivals are deliberately low-key: former deputy
cabinet minister Abdallah Saloum Abdallah and Mahmoud Ahmed
Marei, head of a small, officially sanctioned opposition party.
France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States said on
Tuesday the election would not be free or fair.
Addressing his critics, Assad said Syrians had made their
feelings clear by coming out in large numbers. "The value of
your opinions is zero," he said.
At Damascus University's Faculty of Arts, hundreds of students
lined up to vote, with several buses parked outside.
"With our blood and soul we sacrifice our lives for you Bashar,"
groups of them chanted before the polls opened, in scenes
repeated across the 70% of Syria now under government control.
"We came to elect president Bashar al-Assad...without him Syria
would not be Syria," said Amal, a nursing student, who declined
to give a second name for fear of reprisals.
Officials said privately that authorities had organised large
rallies in recent days to encourage voting and the security
apparatus that underpins Assad's Alawite minority-dominated rule
had instructed state employees to vote.
"We have been told we have to go to the polls or bear
responsibility for not voting," said Jafaar, a government
employee in Latakia who gave his first name only, also fearing
reprisals.
The Sunni Muslim town in eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of
Damascus was one of the first places where pro-democracy
protests broke out in 2011 and was long a focus of defiance
against Assad's rule until it was retaken after years of siege
and bombing that killed thousands of civilians.
The suspected chemical attack in April, 2018 killed at least
fifty civilians, one of several since the start of the conflict
mainly in the Ghouta area that left hundreds dead, including
many women and children. The United States, France and Britain
responded with air strikes against suspected chemical weapons
facilities in Syria.
'DAY OF ANGER'
In parts of the southern city of Deraa, the scene of the first
anti-Assad protests, local figures called for a general strike
to show their opposition to the election. Assad first took power
in 2000 on the death of his father Hafez, who had ruled for 30
years before that.
"All people reject the rule of the son of Hafez," read graffiti
scribbled across several towns in southern Syria, the last part
of the country to fall to Assad under Russian-brokered
agreements, where former rebels still resist his rule.
In northwestern Idlib, where Turkey-backed factions administer
the last rebel enclave where at least three million of those who
fled Assad's bombing campaign are sheltering, people took to the
streets to denounce the election "theatre".
"It's a day of anger, let's participate and raise our voices in
the squares of freedom to announce our rejection of the criminal
Assad and his elections," said one of the posters hung in a
rebel-held town along the border with Turkey.
In northeast Syria, where U.S. backed Kurdish-led forces
administer an autonomous oil-rich region, officials closed
border crossings with government held areas to prevent people
from heading to polling stations in state-run areas.
They said the election was a setback to reconciliation with a
Kurdish minority that has faced decades of ethnic discrimination
from one party rule espousing Arab nationalist ideology.
(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi, Additional reporting by Rodi
Said in Qamishli and Khalil Ashawi in Idlib Writing By Maha El
Dahan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Michael Perry and Philippa
Fletcher)
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