Syrian presidential elections: Spectacle and ‘electoral farce’ May 5, 2021 A picture of Bashar al-Assad affixed to a window in the al-Hamidiyah Market of Old Damascus, 21/04/2021 (AFP) AMMAN — Out of 51 applications for candidacy in Syria’s presidential elections, the Constitutional Court announced on May 3 the acceptance of just three candidates to run in the elections slated for May 20 for citizens outside Syria and May 26 for citizens inside Syria. While Syrians living in areas outside of regime control, including some four million people in the last opposition areas in the country’s northwest, are deprived of casting their votes in “the electoral farce,” as Syrians on social media have termed it, millions of others may also be barred under legal and constitutional pretexts, or due to security and logistical obstacles preventing them from participating.