The re-election campaign of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has not officially started yet, but his supporters are already roaming the capital every day, chanting slogans of support. Waving Al-Assad's picture, they drive around the quieter sections of Damascus, blowing their horns and firing shots in the air. The public mostly ignores them. Syria's information minister claimed that the government will take a neutral position on the presidential candidates. But government departments, schools and nine small parties allied with the ruling Syrian Baath Party are poised to campaign for the incumbent president. Only two rival candidates have been approved so far by the Constitutional Court for the race. The same court turned down the candidacy of 18 others, saying that they failed to meet the conditions set by an election law that was passed a few weeks ago. Al-Assad's two rivals have no chance of winning, both being relatively unknown even to the opposition. France, the EU, the US and the Arab League have all advised against holding elections in Syria at present, saying that the move is inconsistent with the country's commitments under the Geneva communiqué. The Syrian public, half of which are displaced or homeless, have been largely ignoring the elections. But the security services are keeping their eye on government officials, whose loyalty to the regime is not optional. Assyrian political opposition figure Soliman Youssef expects the turnout in the presidential elections to hover around 10 per cent. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Youssef described Al-Assad's candidacy as a “mockery of democracy.” The elections will “wreck all international and regional efforts seeking to find a political solution, while opening the way for a detrimental military option. How can you hold elections in a war-torn country, one in which half the population is displaced and the other half is afraid to leave their houses,” he asked. The Syrian opposition said that the elections were illegal, as they could not be held without international monitoring. Syrian rights activist Michel Shammas said that Syria did not have independent monitoring bodies to ensure the fairness of elections. “Syria has no independent and impartial monitoring bodies. The elections are supervised solely by the regime, which fully controls the judiciary,” he added. Louay Hussein, leader of the opposition State Building Current, questioned the fairness of the elections. Speaking to the Weekly, Hussein said the “elections are illegal on more than one level, one being that almost half the nation will not take part. There is no way these elections can be fair or free, because there is no impartial monitoring.” Communist opposition figure Maged Habbu said that the move violated the principles reached in the Geneva talks. Speaking to the Weekly, he said that “any unilateral actions by the parties to the conflict must be regarded as shorn of legitimacy and a clear obstruction of peaceful political efforts. This goes for presidential elections, parliamentary elections, or rewriting the constitution. Such steps are in breach of the agreement reached in Geneva.” Even the country's Christian minority, which the regime claims to be trying to protect, is not excited about the elections. Many Christians intend to boycott the presidential elections in protest against Article 3 of the constitution, which stipulates that presidential candidates must be Muslim. Syria has not held elections since former president Hafez Al-Assad, father of the incumbent president, took power in 1971. Both Hafez and Bashar sought office through referendums organised by the Syrian Baath Party, allowing them to win more than 90 per cent of the vote. With a majority of Syrians having lost their homes, livelihoods, or loved ones during the three-year conflict, many believe that the incumbent president should be brought to justice, not run for office. Al-Assad has support within his own Alawite sect, but this cannot possibly bring him more than 20 per cent of the vote in free-and-fair elections. If the elections are held, as the regime seem intent on doing, this will only illustrate the regime's indifference to the feelings of the public. Elections at this particular moment would be nothing but a charade orchestrated by an arrogant regime aided and abetted by Moscow and Tehran.
