18th April 2016
Ken Stone
21st Century Wire
“Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party and its allies have won the majority of the votes in the recent parliamentary elections in the country, official results show.
The Syrian electoral commission announced late Saturday that the National Unity coalition, comprising the ruling party and its allies, had won 200 of the 250 seats at the People’s Assembly (Majlis al-Sha’ab).” ~ Press TV
Tuesday’s Syrian election was a vote of confidence by the Syrian people in their government. 5,085,444 voters cast their ballots out of a possible 8,834,994 eligible voters.
The overall participation rate of 58% (virtually identical to Canada’s last federal election) exceeded the government’s expectations in most places but was low in others.
For example, it was over 80% in Homs but only 52% in Tartous. What might explain the uneven results is the history of the war. People who suffered the most from the war, for example in Homs, were probably more grateful for their liberation and more motivated to exercise their political rights than people in Tartous who saw no fighting at all (though they lost thousands upon thousands of sons and grandsons in the war).
Also significant was the fact that over 140,000 refugees returned across the Lebanese border in just one day in order to vote.
And the polling hours in Damascus, which suffered a lot from the fighting, had to be extended until 11 pm to accommodate all the voters.
There were even polling stations set up by the government in recently liberated Palmyra and Al-Qaryaten, though those polls were largely symbolic because the inhabitants of those towns have not yet been able to return to their homes due to widespread destruction, prior to liberation by the Syrian Arab Army.
The voter participation rate is key to this election, more important than the individual candidates who were elected.
Here’s why: you need to understand elections in a constitutionally-created state, in which one party dominates, in terms of a strike vote in a trade union.
It demonstrates continuing confidence in the leadership at a turning point in the struggle. A union would not be satisfied with a strike vote of 58%, going into a strike. And probably the Syrian government would have wished for a higher rate going into the negotiations at Geneva. But it knew from the start that holding the elections under the conditions of war and occupation was a gamble, because there are a lot of eligible voters living outside of Syria right now, living in places besieged by the terrorists, and who have died but not yet been accounted for.
Taking into account these factors, the participation rate would probably have been much higher.
Among our solidarity delegation, we have been pleased that the Syrian authorities did not try to inflate the figures to make the election results appear better than they actually were:
It reinforces our contention that the Syrian government is a credible force in the serious negotiations ahead.
As mentioned, the turning point for Syria is the current round of negotiations taking place right now in Geneva to find a lasting political solution to the crisis.
Today, the Syrian delegation took their seats with a mandate from the Syrian people, whereas the opposition delegation of head-choppers cobbled together at the last minute by the USA and Saudi Arabia have no mandate at all from the unfortunate Syrians who suffer under military occupation in “rebel-held” areas.
No elections were held there. Western governments, such as the USA, have dismissed the Syrian election out of hand, though the participation rate in the last US election was only 48%.
But that’s not to say there weren’t any interesting candidates elected. The sister of a Syrian soldier, Noor Al-Shogri, stood for election as an independent in parliament. Her brother, Yahya Al-Shoghri, was filmed as he was being executed by ISIS terrorists in 2014 in Raqqa. (If you can stomach the summary execution in cold blood of a prisoner of war, you will find the video brazenly posted by the terrorists on Youtube.)
The barbarians demanded that he say, as his dying words, “Long live the caliphate!” He famously refused and declared instead that “It will be erased!”
His last words then became a rallying cry in the national resistance against the foreign aggression. Noor Al-Shogri easily won her seat.
I met an independent candidate in the Old City of Damascus, Nora Arissian, a small Armenian woman with flaming red hair. She came up to me in the Greek Melkite Patriarch’s procession to the polling station and thanked me for Canada taking in 25000 Syrian refugees and then she pointedly added, “We want them all eventually to come home!”
She too won her seat.
The election results were delayed by a couple of days because the Syrian election commission was unsatisfied with the preparedness of eight polling stations in partially-occupied Aleppo. As I understand it, the elections in Aleppo had to be continued on the day following election day.
Some people have asked what is the role of Palestinian refugees in this election. The answer is that Palestinians, ethnically-cleansed in 1948 and after, do not vote in Syrian elections.
The political and social status of Palestinians in Syria is the highest of any Arab country but the Syrian government doesn’t grant them citizenship or let them vote because it doesn’t want to dilute their right under international law, reaffirmed by numerous resolutions of the United Nations, to return to their homes and farms in Palestine.
The fact that the Syrian government has been so adamant about this principle, is one of the main causes of the foreign aggression against the country (and in support of the State of Israel.) So the Syrian government pays a heavy price for its strong support of the Palestinian people.
In turn, the vast majority of Palestinian refugees in Syria strongly support their government, even though many have been made refugees a second time by the invasion into their neighbourhoods of the terrorist mercenaries from over 80 countries.
For example, a fierce struggle is taking place in Yarmouk right now just a few kilometres from where I write, among Isis, Al Nusra, and other terrorist gangs, over control of this former Palestinian neighbourhood/camp, which used to hold a quarter of a million people but is now a devastated ghost town with only a few thousand souls.
Al Masdar News: Syrian Arab Army advances in Yarmouk
It bears repeating that these parliamentary elections were defiantly called by the Syrian government as “an exercise in national sovereignty.”
The point was to show the world, especially those western and Gulf states, who have waged the five-year long war of aggression against Syria, that Syrians are united in the belief that Syrians, and only Syrians, will decide the fate of Syria.
It appears that the gamble paid off.
***
Ken Stone is a veteran anti-war and peace activist.
To put things in perspective, in 2012 Barack Obama was elected president winning 51.1% of the votes against Mitt Romney’s 47.2%. Only 57.5% of those eligible to vote turned out. Hardly a ringing endorsement as it means that less than 30% of Americans entitled to vote wanted Obama to be president, and slightly fewer wanted Romney to be president.
At slightly over 42% the non-voters comprised just over 10% more of the electorate than voted for Obama. Not so far off half US voters couldn’t even be bothered to tear themselves away from the TV. And they tell us Assad is unpopular. That’s American democracy in a nutshell. .
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That the US or even the UK dare to pontificate about Democracy while creating an Oligarchy makes any comment they make about the Syrian elections null and void. Two very good articles on that very subject : http://theantimedia.org/ron-paul-elections-rigged-voting-pacify/
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The US had the audacity to declare the Syrian elections as “not representing the will of the Syrian people”. This from a nation that just agreed with its cabal of conspirators in the UN to impose a government on Libya only a couple of weeks ago without any election at all.
It might be added that the government had to shipped in from Tunisia as the authority controlling the capital refused to allow them into its airspace to fly there. The new government now ‘rules’ Libya from a heavily protected naval base, from which they hardly ever dare to step out.
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http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/04/17/exposed-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-ruled-by-billionaires-and-dictators/
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As I said recently to Ambassador Robert Ford in yet another of our waspish exchanges 🙂 he should examine his own array of tyrants and butchers before he starts to point the finger elsewhere not even mentioning his country’s alliance with the single most despotic regime in the world, the only absolute monarchy..Saudi Arabia that is mass murdering Yemenis with US and UK weapons and armoury.
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BTW: Just so you know, Bryan, I copied and pasted your comment in a comment I left with Off-guardian, in response to a “louisproyect.” Many thanks for the ammo.
You can find your comment, complete with attribution, also doing a bit of necessary work here:
https://off-guardian.org/2016/04/19/syrian-govt-1-7-million-displaced-syrian-citizens-returned-home/comment-page-1/#comment-29961
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LOL Louis Proyect LOVES me!
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Love can be such a nuisance.
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Reblogged this on deinvestiture.
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Vanessa,
Merely to make a nuisance of myself: where is your “search widget?” What do I do if, for example, I want to find your article on “Syria’s White Helmets?” Yes, I know. I could google that string and your name, but then I’ll probably end up on Global Research or some other lesser known website 😉 , whereas what I want is to read it here.
Of course, if you are too busy, well then don’t worry about it. But if you could . . . XXOO ( then that would mean two kisses and two hugs; I’d be willing to go a couple more if I have to . . .)
–N
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Hi Norman, oh sorry I should add a White Helmet widget 🙂 thanks for pointing out. I will get to it later today, I see you found the article…well done for going back at LP..horrid little man.
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Actually, just scrolled down my categories/tags and there is a White Helmets one..all my articles are under that…its down the page on right hand side…hope that helps 🙂 xxxxx back at you.
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Oooops! (And I looked and I looked and . . .)
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hhhh you are forgiven 🙂
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