Controlled candidates, excluded refugees, friendly observers: the sham elections of Assad’s Syria

The only real doubt is what concerns the percentage of victory: because the fact that winning the presidential elections in Syria today will be Bashar al Assad is not in question. To challenge the president in the second vote since the war that devastated the country in 2011 – in the first, in 2014, he took 90% of the votes – are two characters with no chance: the former minister Abdullah Salloum Abdullah, close to the government, e Mahmoud Ahmad Mar’ai, a member of the opposition tolerated by the regime, and therefore without legitimacy in the eyes of those who oppose Assad.