One singer appeared on a stage set up in a Tartus square, dressed in the flag of Syria. Almost no one was wearing a face mask, though Syria is facing a surge of coronavirus cases. The election is likely to offer little change to conditions in Syria. While Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran, may be seeking a new seal of legitimacy for the president in office since , his re-election is likely to deepen the rift with the West, driving him closer to Russian and Iranian backers as well as China.
In Streetwise Hebrew for the Times of Israel Community, each month we learn several colloquial Hebrew phrases around a common theme. These are bite-size audio Hebrew classes that we think you'll really enjoy. Tightening U. Rallies with thousands of people waving Syrian flags and holding pictures of Assad while singing and dancing took place all day Thursday in celebration of the election. The vote was boycotted by the U. While Syrian territory is under the influence of several foreign actors in the conflict such as Russia, Iran and Turkey, which directly or through their allies control parts of the country, Assad's real power appears to have weakened.
For Majed, "the regime no longer has a say in a country fragmented and occupied by foreign forces because it no longer manages anything except its prison system and internal politics in the areas it controls.
Russia treats Syria the way Syria treated Lebanon. Majed, a Franco-Lebanese political scientist, compares the reality of Assad's power today to that of Lebanese authorities during the Syrian occupation of neighbouring Lebanon.
The Russians, like the Iranians, prefer to have a weakened leader under their control in order to make him even more dependent on their support, he noted. In this asymmetrical relationship, he continues, the Syrian president is not really in a position to say no to the Russians and is sometimes forced to make concessions. Assad "knows that the Iranians and the Russians are obliged to put up with him, since he himself has prevented the emergence of any potential competitor, and he uses this to balance his relations with his two protectors to hang on for a while," said Mariotti.
The Syrian president has the freedom to get closer to the Iranians when the Russians are too demanding and vice versa, and when there are rifts, confirms Balanche. This, while respecting the red lines that have surely been set for him, is his situation," he explained. But there were no doubts that al-Assad would be re-elected. In the previous polls in , he had won nearly 89 percent of the vote. Some danced and beat drums, while others waved Syrian flags and carried pictures of al-Assad, state media reported.
Thousands of other Syrians rallied in the coastal city of Latakia and in Umayyad Square in the capital Damascus, which along with Tartus and Latakia are bastions of the government. The vote was boycotted by the Syrian Democratic Council, which administers an autonomous oil-rich region in the northeast, as well as in the northwestern region of Idlib, where people denounced the election in large protests on Wednesday.
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