MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th May, 2021) Syria on Wednesday is set to hold its second presidential election since the onset of the decade-long war in the country, with incumbent Bashar Assad against two challengers.
The country will have its polling stations open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time (4:00 to 16:00 GMT) to elect its next leader from the crop of candidates that includes Assad, as well as former minister of state for parliamentary affairs Abdullah Salloum Abdullah and the head of the opposition National Democratic Front, Mahmoud Ahmad Marei.
While May 26 is the official voting day in the Arab country, Syrians residing abroad were able to cast their ballots at the nation's diplomatic missions on May 20.
President Assad has been in office since 2000, following his father, Hafez Assad. Since 2011 he has been presiding over a devastating war against various insurgent groups which have been trying to unseat the official government in Damascus. Assad won his last election in 2014 with over 90% of the vote. Despite being the secretary general of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, the current president is running as an independent.
Abdullah Salloum Abdullah, who served as a state minister from 2016 to 2020, is running for the Socialist Unionist Party. His electoral platform states the need for return of displaced Syrians, as well as defeating terrorist and foreign forces.
Mahmoud Ahmad Marei is running for the National Democratic Front and calls for the release of prisoners of conscience, as well as a participatory unity government.
In late April, the Syrian parliament approved the presence of international observers from "friendly countries" during the election. The observers are said to include lawmakers from Russia, Iran, Armenia, China, South Africa, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Belarus, Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador, according to the Syrian legislature. Moscow is planning to send approximately 25 lawmakers to monitor the electoral process.
There are also non-government observers from various anti-war and pro-Syria groups. For some of them, this is not their first trip to the Arab country.
"We've met with numerous people, and what's really important is that Syria follows through with its constitutional process as it is doing, and really not allow the West to undermine the election process, and we know even seven years ago when they held the elections, the West tried to stop them," Rick Sterling, an independent journalist and a Syria Solidarity Movement delegate, told Sputnik.
The sentiment is shared by Wyatt Miller, an Anti-War Committee delegate from Minnesota.
"We hope to observe the elections that are taking place this week, and to see with our own eyes so we can counter propaganda that's spread in the West that is trying to delegitimize not just the elections, but the sovereignty and the unity of the Syrian state and its fight against this terrible war that's been imposed on it," Miller told Sputnik.
The delegates who talked to Sputnik have the stated aim of shedding light on the situation in Syria.
