The opposition boycotted this week's local elections in Syria amidst low voter turnout Syria's official news agency reported that 43,000 candidates competed for 17,600 seats in governorates, cities, towns and municipalities across Syria in local elections this week, adding that 9,849 polling stations had been set up in 1,337 municipalities across the country. The official media said that voter turnout had been high, publishing photographs of polling stations with crowds of voters and Syrian television interviewing those going out to vote, reports Bassel Oudat. However, independent observers have not been able to verify the turnout in the elections in the absence of independent monitoring, with the official monitors, members of the Syrian judiciary, being under the control of the government and ruling Syrian Baath Party. Opposition activists say that voter turnout was very low, claiming that the country's official media has been focusing on a handful of polling stations while ignoring the vast majority of others. Activists said that in some areas voter turnout had been negligible, such as in Deraa and surrounding areas, together with in Homs, Edleb, Hamah and rural Damascus. A large number of polling stations in Damascus itself and in the commercial capital of Aleppo were also entirely boycotted, opposition figures said. "These are the first elections anywhere in the world where there are more candidates than voters," they claimed. According to Suleiman Al-Youssef, an activist, "there has been a complete boycott of the elections by Assyrian, Kurdish, Armenian and Arab opposition parties in northern Syria, both in terms of candidates and voters." Al-Youssef said that the candidates had been selected "from the security agencies, the ruling Baath Party and those within its orbit." "There can be no municipal or legislative elections under this oppressive and tyrannical regime, which has turned its back on the demands of the people for freedom and democracy and has pushed the country to the edge of the precipice in order to remain in power." Anwar Abdel-Nour, an opposition figure, accused the Syrian authorities of having fabricated reports about high voter turnout. "State agencies transport ballot boxes that are already filled with ballot papers from municipal headquarters to ballot stations," he said. "Orders were given to all state institutions to force civil servants to cast their votes, and for the first time the authorities are doing a roll call of absentees. Members of the Baath Party have also been told they have to vote or face questions from the Party." For its part, the Syrian government has taken pride in the elections, describing them as being "in line with the reform process led by President Bashar Al-Assad" and carried out according to an elections law issued in August, nearly five months after the start of the Syrian uprising. The local elections "will be the cornerstone for the forthcoming parliamentary elections," it said, though no date has yet been set for these. People in Syria are used to the results of local and parliamentary elections being decided in advance, given that the ruling Syrian Baath Party and its allies in the National Progressive Front must win more than 70 per cent of the seats according to the Syrian constitution, which grants the Baath Party alone the position of leading the country and society. Iyad Barakat, a human rights activist from the southern city of Deraa where the Syrian uprising began nine months ago, said that most polling stations were empty and under heavy guard by security forces forcing people to cast their ballots. However, "boycotting elections is the choice of an oppressed people that will not participate in local or parliamentary elections under the present conditions of suppression and the killing of peaceful demonstrators. This comprehensive boycott is an expression of the popular condemnation of the killings, arrests and violations by regime forces against peaceful demonstrators calling for freedom and dignity in Syria," Barakat told Al-Ahram Weekly. The Syrian opposition boycotted the elections and does not recognise them, saying that they are "irrelevant" since they will have to be carried out again once a democratic system is introduced in Syria after the end of the Al-Assad regime.
