Senior MP sees presidential election as happy ending for Syrian crisis

A senior Syrian legislator appreciated expatriates' high turnout at the ballot box in different world states, and stressed that the presidential election can be a good end to the crisis in his country.
"Syrians showed that they can be trusted well by their country and deserve appreciation," Yousef al-Asa'd told FNA on Saturday.
"By their high turnout in the presidential election outside Syria, the people actually shouted their opposition to terrorism and showed that they have decided to reconstruct Syria again," he added.
Asa'd also predicted massive participation of the Syrian people inside the country in the upcoming presidential election on June 3, and said, "Undoubtedly and God willing, such turnout will put an end to the crisis in Syria."
The Syrian people in different cities of the country will go to polls on Tuesday. Three candidates are running for the presidency in Syria, including incumbent President Bashar Assad, who has been in power since 2000. The other two candidates are Maher Abdul-Hafiz Hajjar, 43, an ex-Communist Party activist and member of parliament; and Hassan Abdullah Nouri, 54, a Damascus native and former lawmaker, who previously headed Syria's Chamber of Industry.
Syrian expatriates went to the poll on Wednesday to choose their next president. Polling centers all opened since early Wednesday morning in Iran, Lebanon, Russia, China, Yemen, Indonesia, Malaysia, Venezuela, Jordan, Sudan, Oman, Czech, Belarus, India, Sweden and Scandinavian countries.
But despite frequent claims about their support for human rights and democracy, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium banned the Syrian election in a movement condemned by the Damascus government and Syrians. Syrian expatriates in France ran a symbolic election in Paris on 25 May in protest at the decision. The UAE also followed suit and did not allow Syrian expats to arrange the election.
Yet, the massive participation of expats was so strong that it even made the western media acknowledge the unexpectedly high voter turnout.
The flood of the Syrian voters in Beirut pushed US sources to say that the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan have granted the Syrian government a strategic power.
Syria's central election commission extended the voting hours at polling stations abroad for five hours as the country's embassies witnessed high voter turnout.
Meanwhile in Lebanon the Syrian embassy extended voting in the presidential election for one day, after the mission was flocked by an increasing number of voters.
The voting comes as the Syrian parliament approved in March a new election law, which for the first time in the history of the country would allow several candidates to participate in the vote.
The Syrian parliament is composed of 250 lawmakers, who can only back one candidate each. The law prohibits candidates to hold dual citizenship.
Assad was re-elected to his second term in a nationwide referendum in 2007, in which he garnered 97.62 percent of the votes.
Syria's former Deputy Prime Minister and current opposition leader Qadri Jamil said that the June 3 presidential election can have a positive effect on the country, which is mired in a 3.5-year-long civil war.
We think that an election, even though it is out of place here, can still do us good. We are and will work to make sure that the majority of the Syrian people come to the polls to express their will,” the politician said, RIA Novosti reported.
Jamil arrived in Moscow at the helm of an opposition delegation to discuss the situation in his country ahead of the presidential vote with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Jamil is a leader of the Popular Front for Change and Liberation, which is a moderate, home-based opposition movement.
“Both Russian and Syrian sides believe we must do our best to find a political solution to the ongoing crisis as soon as possible,” Jamil said in the interview.
He confessed that Syria’s “interior” and “exterior” opposition groups both believed the current civil war was not an optimal time for a presidential election, but added their movement would stand by President Assad’s side until the crisis was resolved.