Syrian president Bashar al-Assad won the country’s presidential election on Tuesday with 88.7 percent of the vote, officially granting him a third seven-year term ruling a nation that has been embroiled in bloody conflict for over three years.
Although Syria’s Higher Judicial Committee for Elections reported that there were no electoral violations, residents in opposition-held areas have scoffed at the results and Western leaders have dismissed them. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the presidential results a “farce.”
Damascus may now be filled with celebratory gunfire, but it remains to be seen how Assad intends to resolve a crisis that has killed 160,000 people and created nearly 3 million refugees abroad.
