Polls closed Wednesday at midnight, after voters in areas controlled by the Syrian regime cast their votes in presidential elections in which President Bashar al-Assad is running for a fourth term of 7 years.
The elections took place only in government-controlled areas, while they were absent from the areas controlled by the Syrian opposition factions (north). Hundreds of people demonstrated in Idlib, asserting that the elections were “illegitimate”.
After he and his wife Asmaa voted in the city of Douma, one of the former strongholds of the opposition near Damascus, al-Assad responded to Western positions by saying, "The value of your opinions is zero."
Assad's position came a day after the foreign ministers of the United States, Germany, Britain, France and Italy - in a joint statement - confirmed that the elections "will not be free or fair."
Washington considered the elections being held by the Bashar al-Assad regime to be an “insult to the Syrian people.” Ambassador Richard Mills, the American deputy delegate to the United Nations, said at a session of the UN Security Council on the developments of the Syrian crisis that “according to Security Council Resolution 2254, the elections must be conducted in accordance with For a new constitution, under the supervision of the United Nations in a safe and neutral environment, and none of this is happening today. "
The UN special envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen has said that the presidential elections in Syria are not part of the political process stipulated in Security Council Resolution 2254.
Pedersen stressed during an open session of the UN Security Council on the situation in Syria, that the international organization continues to stress the importance of reaching a political solution to end the conflict.
Two other unknown candidates are running in the presidential race, namely, former minister and deputy Abdullah Salloum Abdullah, and lawyer Mahmoud Mari, from the internal opposition accepted by the regime, and he previously participated among its representatives in a round of negotiations sponsored by the United Nations in Geneva, which was marked by failure.