By Micah Halpern
I've Been Thinking:
This week there were presidential elections in Syria. The results are in.
Syrian Parliament Speaker Jihad Lahan announced the final results.
He along with the Supreme Constitutional Court of Syria said that the turnout was 73.42%. That was pretty good considering that there is a civil war waging in Syria and that many people were threatened and told to stay home and boycott the elections.
Assad received 88.7% of the vote. The other two candidates combined garnered 5.5% of the vote and the rest were disqualified ballots.
There are important issues that emerge from this vote. Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah put it best. He said that there is no doubt that Assad is the popular candidate by all standards and this election cements his position.
It is very hard to think otherwise with the kind of turnout and the kind of victory Assad received. There were only sporadic areas of the country where polls were closed down by the rebels. If you looked at international media coverage, however, you would have assumed that half the country could not or would not come out to vote.
Through this election Bashar Assad has fortified his position and made it undeniably clear to all that he is there to stay --- at least for the near future.
Micah@MicahHalpern.com
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