Damascus under tight security as polls open
June 2, 2014, 11:38 pm

Security checkpoints in Damascus and around polling stations have increased ahead of Tuesday’s presidential vote [Xinhua]

The Interior Ministry says it has beefed up security throughout the capital Damascus, including securing all entrances into the city and all government buildings.

It has also set up security checkpoints and increased the number of soldiers guarding some 9,300 polling stations. The Ministry says that more than 15 million Syrians are eligible to vote.

Rebel groups fired mortar rounds that caused injuries and material damage near Damascus University as hundreds of expat Syrians who were unable to vote abroad arrived in the capital on Monday.

The election, the first in some 50 years, is part of the Syrian government’s plan of reconciliation and unity – a political road map of sorts that was first suggested by President Bashar Al-Assad three years ago as the protests against his rule and armed conflict intensified.

Assad is running against two other candidates – currently serving as members of parliament – but is expected to win in a landslide poll.

The election comes as peace efforts by world powers appear to have reached an impasse, and as Assad’s forces continue to win back territory formerly held by armed rebel groups.

Last month, Special Envoy for the Arab League and the United Nations to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi resigned from his post having faced “almost impossible odds” and leaving the conflict raging into a fourth year with no clear end in sight.

The Geneva-II peace conference last January took nearly a year of difficult diplomatic see-sawing to put together and then practically collapsed within weeks.

A deal, however, was brokered to evacuate more than a thousand people from the besieged Syrian city of Homs, the third largest in the country.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon – which hosts more than a million now – flocked to their embassy in the Baabda district of Beirut. An overwhelming majority voted for Assad.

The Syrian Civil War, now in its fourth year, has caused the death of more than 130,000 people, according to UN data, and displaced nearly six million people – some within the country and others in Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt.

Since the conflict began, the UN also estimates that poverty has spread among a large swathe of the Syrian population while the economy has virtually ground to a standstill. Some cities have been totally destroyed.

Independent estimates hold that Syria would need hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstruction and infrastructure to return to a pre-2011 level.

Source: Agencies