Elections: Assad is re-elected President of Syria with 95% of the vote | International

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won a fourth term and will continue to rule the Arab country for another seven years after securing 95% of the vote in the controversial presidential elections – without rivals and with the opposition in exile – held Wednesday in the territories. under their control.

“I am happy and honored to announce the victory of Bashar Hafez al-Assad as President of the Syrian Arab Republic,” Parliament Speaker Hamuda al Sabag announced on Thursday from the hemicycle.

Assad obtained, according to official results, 13,540,869 votes, or 95.1% of the total; his opponent Mahmud Marai, leader of the internal opposition tolerated by Damascus, won 470,276 supporters; and in last place was former Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Abdulá Salloum Abdulá, with 213,968 votes.

Almost 14.24 million voters took part in the elections out of a total of just over 18 million people called to the polls inside and outside the country, detailed Al Sabag, in an announcement both expected that arrived hours later than the time set for her.

“It is the will of the people and nothing is above it, for it is taken from the will of God that people have the freedom of choice and determine their future as a means of building nations,” the president concluded. of the camera.

These are the first elections held in relative calm since the start of the armed conflict in 2011 and have been widely rejected by opposition abroad and parts of the international community.

The UN has also dissociated itself from the electoral nomination because it is not part of the peace plan for a political solution in Syria that it has supported since 2015, while some countries and sectors of the opposition in exile consider it a “farce” to revalidate Assad.

Assad came to power after the death of his father, Hafez, in 2000, in a referendum in which he was accepted as president. In 2007, he was again approved as president in a new popular consultation.

Following the riots that broke out in Syria against his government in 2011, the president reformed the political system to allow the formation of other parties and the election of the head of state by suffrage. El Asad was already expected to comfortably beat his opponents.

The European Union on Thursday approved the one-year extension of the sanctions imposed against members and supporters of the Assad regime, as well as against companies and entities linked to the repression or benefiting from government management.