In Damascus few care and fewer expect much from upcoming elections
Damascus (AsiaNews) – In Damascus few care and fewer expect much from elections to the People’s Council (parliament), an institution set up on the basis of the constitution adopted in 1973 under the rule of the late President Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar al-Assad.
“Nothing will change,” said a Syrian bishop. And Michel Chammas, a lawyer and a Catholic, told AsiaNews that demands to change the constitution will not achieve anything because few are interested in voting in a country where 80 per cent of the population of 20 million earns just US$ 200 a month.
“The first condition for civic and political participation is social peace which has not existed [here] for many years. Surveys already suggest that the turnout won’t exceed 15 per cent, proving the point,” he said.
Such a low rate of participation will not change as long as the people feels manipulated and corruption and cost of living remain high, “not to mention the ways people are exploited, the absence of freedom of thought, and the one party state.”
As to what the international community, especially Europe, should do about the upcoming elections, Mr Chammas said he expects the “world to be uninterested because results are already known before votes are cast.”
Unlike Lebanon’s elections two years ago, Syria’s poll will not be supervised by any international observers.
“The world will become aware and interested when the state of emergency is lifted, when political prisoners are freed, when laws that allow political freedoms are adopted, when politics is open everyone and finally when the press is free,” he said.
For Chammas, the parliamentary poll in March and the presidential elections in July have no bearing on one another. The July ballot is just a referendum on the president’s policies with no concrete difference from what happens in March.
Finally, as a lawyer Chammas is highly critical of the existing law which requires that any candidate to the presidency must be a Muslim and a member of the Baa’th Party. Such “requirements are inconsistent with the history of our country, the ‘birthplace’ of Christianity.”
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