President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has retained the presidency for a fourth term after taking 95 percent of the vote in an election which has been dismissed abroad.
The elections ‘have proven the strength of popular legitimacy that the people have conferred on the state,’ 55-year-old Assad said, in his inauguration speech.
They ‘have discredited the declarations of Western officials on the legitimacy of the state, the constitution and the homeland’.
He called on ‘those who bet on the demise of the homeland’ to return to its ‘embrace’.
‘We tell each and every one of them, you are exploited by the enemies of our country against your own people, and the revolution with which they deceived you is an illusion,’ he said.
The United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy said the poll was ‘neither free nor fair’, and Syria’s opposition has called it a ‘farce’.
Syria’s decade-long civil war has killed more than 500 000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure.
Government forces control two-thirds of the country; Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate and allied rebels run the rebel bastion of Idlib in the northwest; Kurdish-led forces control a large swathe of the east after expelling the Islamic State; and Turkey and its Syrian proxies hold a strip of territory along the northern border.
Over 80% of the population live in poverty and the Syrian pound has plunged in value against the dollar, causing skyrocketing inflation. The government has increased the prices of unsubsidised petrol, bread, sugar, and rice, while power cuts can last up to 20 hours a day.
According to the World Food Programme, 12.4 million people struggle to find enough food each day.
The government has blamed its economic woes on Western sanctions and the crisis in neighbouring Lebanon.
[Image: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom / ABr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16022481]