Syria’s President Assad sworn in for fourth term with 95% of vote | Syria

President Bashar al-Assad took his oath of office for a fourth term in war-torn Syria on Saturday after officially winning 95% of the vote in an election rejected abroad.

It was the second presidential election since a decade-long civil war that killed nearly half a million people and damaged the country’s infrastructure.

Shortly before the ceremony, rockets from pro-government forces in the country’s last major rebel bastion, Idlib, killed six people, including three children and a paramedic, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Representatives of the press carry the body of a victim who was pulled from the rubble of a house in Idlib province on July 17 after a shelling by the armed forces of the Bashar al-Assad regime and his allies. Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

An AFP correspondent in the village of Zarya saw men rush to remove bodies from the rubble of a collapsed house before carrying one away wrapped in a red blanket.

Assad, 55, was sworn in on the Syrian Constitution and the Koran in the presence of more than 600 guests, including ministers, business people, academics and journalists, the organizers said.

President Assad comes to the swearing-in on Saturday. Photo: Syrian Presidency Facebook Page / AFP / Getty

The elections “demonstrated the strength of the people’s legitimacy given to the state,” Assad said in his inaugural address.

They have “discredited the statements of Western officials about the legitimacy of the state”.

On the eve of the May 26 elections, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy said the poll was “neither free nor fair” and Syria’s fragmented opposition has called it a “farce”.

The war in Syria has displaced millions of people since the crackdown on anti-government protests began in 2011. Assad called on “those who bet on the collapse of the state” to return to “the embrace of their homeland”.

With his campaign slogan “Hope through Work”, Assad had presented himself as the only realistic architect of the reconstruction.

In his speech, he said the focus is now on liberating areas that are still out of government control and strengthening the economy and people’s livelihoods.

After a series of victories against jihadists and rebels with significant support from allies Russia and Iran, government forces now control two thirds of Syria. Syria’s former al-Qaeda partner operates the opposition bastion Idlib in the northwest, where rebels supported by Turkey are also present.

A Turkish-Russian ceasefire has largely been in place in Idlib since March 2020 after the latest fatal government offensive against the region with around three million people was halted. But violations of that ceasefire have increased in the south of the bastion in recent weeks, the British observatory said.

Kurdish-led forces control much of the oil-rich East after they drove the Islamic State jihadist group out of the region with US support. And Turkey and its Syrian representatives hold a long strip of territory along the northern border.

Assad promised to wrest the remaining Syrian territory from “the terrorists and their Turkish and American sponsors”.

Assad takes his oath when the country is in a serious economic crisis. More than 80% of the population live in poverty and the Syrian pound has depreciated against the dollar, leading to skyrocketing inflation.

In the past few weeks, the government has increased the price of gasoline, bread, sugar and rice, while fuel blackouts can last up to 20 hours a day. Nationwide, 12.4 million people struggle every day to find enough food, said the World Food Program.

The Damascus government blames Western sanctions and a worsening crisis in neighboring Lebanon for the country’s economic problems.

Banks in Lebanon have banned depositors from withdrawing their dollar savings for more than a year, affecting Syrian customers. “The biggest obstacle now is the Syrian money, which is frozen in Lebanese banks,” said Assad, estimating it at tens of billions of dollars.

The war in Syria cost the country $ 1.2 trillion, the charity World Vision estimates.

After the swearing in, Assad met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was visiting a senior Chinese official in Syria for the first time since early 2012, the presidency said.

Assad was elected for the first time by referendum in 2000 after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, who had ruled Syria for 30 years.