Syria President Assad Expected to Win Election; John Kerry Calls It a 'Farce'
Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who is running largely unopposed, is expected to be re-elected as president after voting began this week. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called the elections a "farce."
CNN reported on Tuesday that the outcome of the elections is not in doubt, and Assad is expected to continue his Syrian regime. Assad first came to power 14 years ago.
The other candidates for the presidency, businessman and former government minister Hassan al-Nouri, and Maher Hajjar, a lawmaker, are largely unknown and not expected to mount a serious challenge.
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Last month, Kerry called the elections a "farce," and said that the U.S. and other nations remain committed to seeing a change in the "dynamics" in Syria.
So far in the three-year civil war in Syria between Assad's forces and rebels looking to topple his regime, close to 150,000 people have been killed, around 6.5 million have been displaced and 3 million have been forced to flee to other countries. The U.N. has called it "the biggest humanitarian crisis" of today.
After chemical weapons were used on an attack near Damascus in August 2013, which killed at least 1,429 Syrians and close to 426 children, Kerry blasted Assad's regime and insisted it was behind the attacks. The Syrian president has denied responsibility.
"The primary question is no longer what do we know … It is what are we in the world going to do about it?" the secretary of State asked.
The current elections have been heavily criticized by other countries as well, including the British Foreign Office, which said the vote "will be a grotesque parody of democracy."
The U.S. State Department noted that Assad's administration has taken steps "to make it difficult if not impossible to have a fair and free election in Syria."
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the elections will likely worsen the situation, and "will damage the political process and hamper the prospects for a political solution that the country so urgently needs."
At a news conference in January, Kerry insisted that the only way for the crisis in Syria to get better was if Assad stepped down.
"I believe as we begin to ... get into this process, that it will become clear there is no political solution whatsoever if Assad is not discussing a transition and if he thinks he is going to be part of that future. It is not going to happen," Kerry stated.
"We are also not out of options with respect to what we may be able to do to increase the pressure and further change the calculus," he added.
While President Barack Obama considered a military strike on Assad, the Syrian regime managed to diffuse the situation to an extent by promising to begin handing over its chemical weapons to international forces for disarmament.
