Bashar al-Assad overwhelmingly wins Syria’s presidential election

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad wins the country’s presidential election by a landslide, securing 95.1 percent of the popular vote.

The senior parliamentarian said Assad had earned a total of 13,540,360 votes, extending his tenure for a fourth consecutive term.

The election turnout, Sabbagh noted, stood at 14,239,000.

According to Press TV, Assad was contesting the polls alongside two other candidates, opposition figure Mahmoud Ahmad Marei and former MP and Minister, Abdullah Sallum Abdullah.

Marei came second in the race by winning 3.3 percent or 470,276 of the ballots, while Abdullah secured 1.5 percent of the vote or 213,968 ballots.

Upon scoring a win, any given president is given a seven-year mandate in Syria.

Assad, whose father Hafez used to serve the Syrian people in the same position, first won incumbency in 2000 following his father’s demise and provisional presidency of Abdul Halim Khaddam.

Right in the middle of his second term, an avalanche of foreign-backed militancy and terrorism started to sweep through the country. 

The violence sought to sow chaos in the Arab country and depose Assad. In perspective, though, it also sought to damage the interests of Damascus’ allies in the Arab country, and have the chaos sweep through the region.

The crisis gave way to the presence of Takfiri terrorist outfits, such as Daesh, in 2014. Unsurprisingly, the United States and dozens of its allies used the situation as an excuse to invade the country. The US-led invasion and regular attacks by the Israeli regime on Syria’s defenses started to significantly interrupt Damascus’ efforts to restore the situation back to normal.

The violence turned the biggest part of Syria into scenes of bloodbath and havoc. 

ME