A Syrian court has appointed two ‘fighters’ to face Assad in a May vote | Political News
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A Syrian court has appointed two unidentified individuals to fight Bashar al-Assad in a presidential election.
Syrian Supreme Court has appointed a former prime minister and a member of the opposition in Damascus to meet Bashar al-Assad in Presidential election this month.
Assad’s party on Monday approved three of the 51 candidates for the May 26 by-elections, among them The 55-year-old president himself, is expected to win fourth place.
Jihad al-Laham, President of the Supreme Court, said at a press conference on state television that Abdallah Salloum Abdallah, the prime minister from 2016 to 2020, would be approved to be president.
The third candidate was named Mahmoud Marei, a member of the so-called “opposition extremists” whose exiled party leaders extended power.
Damascus sees the election as a stepping stone to its operation regardless of the war. Opponents as well as Western nations see it as farce to keep Assad in power forever and leave the discussion to resolve the dispute.
All 48 other jobs have been criticized for “failure to meet legal requirements”, said the president of the court, without comment. He has until May 7 to appeal.
Applicants must obtain assistance from the 35 members of parliament, each of whom is allowed to return one.
Opposition members who have been deported are being held hostage by an election law that stipulates that permanent leave must be extended to Syria for the past 10 years.
Conflict
The election will be the second since a 10-year war that has killed more than 388,000 people and forced more than half of the non-combatants in Syria to leave their homeland.
Damascus has invited lawmakers from Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela and Cuba to watch the elections.
In New York last week, western members of the United Nations Security Council, led by the United States, France and the United Kingdom, denied the results of an earlier May 26 inquiry, a role Russia has declared as “illegal”.
Al-Assad, who has been in power for 21 years, was elected by the referendum in 2000 and 2007. In the first polls conducted in 2014, only two people except al-Assad, out of 24 candidates, were allowed to run.
Campaigning begins on May 11, when Foreign Assyrians will be able to vote at their offices on May 20.
Al-Assad has taken action in recent months to curb public dissatisfaction that comes with anger over declining living standards and lower costs, including raising government wages, seizing embezzlers and bringing government exchanges to a black market.
Opponents say some of the new features, such as cheap loans, favor political allies and financiers, including its small Alawite ruling class and government.
On Sunday, al-Assad granted permission to pardon others who were unprepared, financiers, smugglers and petty criminals, whose relatives hope could lead to the release of freedom fighters in recent months.
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