Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was on Thursday re-elected for a fourth term, official results showed, despite Western accusations the polls were “neither free nor fair.”
The controversial vote extending al-Assad’s stranglehold on power was the second since the start of a decade-long civil conflict that has killed more than 388,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure.
The Syrian parliamentary speaker announced that al-Assad garnered 95.1 percent of the votes cast, trouncing two virtually unknown challengers.
Standing against him were former state minister Abdullah Salloum Abdullah and Mahmoud Ahmad Marie, a member of the so-called “tolerated opposition,” long dismissed by exiled opposition