Syria’s ruling Baath party has won an expected majority in the war-torn country’s parliamentary elections.
President Bashar al-Assad’s party and allied candidates won 177 of the 250 seats in Sunday’s vote, election officials said, adding that turnout was 33%, as compared to 57% in 2016.
Voting also took place in former opposition-held areas for the time since government forces retook most of the country. More than 1,600 candidates have pledged to revive the economy and rebuild infrastructure destroyed by the nine-year war.
“Simply put, these are illegitimate elections. The regime chose the candidates, even the independent ones, and they elected them. The people in Syria did not have the freedom to vote, this was a theater play by the regime”, said Yehya Aridi, a member of the opposition committee at the UN peace talks in Geneva.
The United States also rejected the results: “The Assad regime carried out rigged parliamentary elections yesterday and the vote was neither free nor fair. Syrians and the world aren’t fooled by this latest example of Assad’s corruption and repression”, a US state department spokesperson said.
The election was postponed from April because of the coronavirus pandemic.
