Stay-at-home Syrians in fear as Assad wins

DAMASCUS: Two days after Syria’s presidential election, there are signs of anxiety among those who boycotted the vote — and who don’t have the ink stain on their finger that would show they played their part in Bashar Assad’s victory.
Assad won Tuesday’s election with nearly 89 percent support, according to officials, triggering celebrations in some government-controlled parts of Syria where voting took place.
Authorities said 73 percent of eligible Syrians cast their votes — a remarkably high figure in a country devastated by a conflict which drove 3 million people to flee abroad — dipping their finger in permanent ink to show they had taken part.
“Let’s see whose finger has no ink,” the host of a local radio show said on Thursday, playing half-jokingly on fears that those who did not vote could face consequences.
On election day, some people tried to find an alternative to the official polling station ink. “Can’t we use regular ink from the stationery store?” asked a young man who didn’t want to vote but feared he could be arrested for boycotting the election.
“Are they going to flag down me at checkpoints and ask for my army papers?” he said, referring to his mandatory military service which he has postponed by purposely failing the final two parts of his university engineering course.
Another Damascene, who works in a health club, said he stayed at home with his wife for 48 hours to avoid punishment for not voting. “And I don’t know if I should go into work later today. What if they all have ink on their finger and they ask how come I don’t?” he said.
He said that when family and friends called him on election day to ask if he had voted, he lied and said he had.
“I don’t want any headache, especially not on the phone. Those who know how much I oppose Assad already know that I didn’t go, and those who don’t know can keep their illusions,” he said.
“I haven’t been able to do anything for the rebels, because I live here and everything is under tight control and I worry about my family. So on election day, not voting was the least I could do,” he added.
Assad’s international allies, including Iran, Russia and the Lebanese militant group and political movement Hezbollah, all praised the election. “The election of Bashar Assad is the obituary of the conspiracy which aimed at destroying (Syria),” Mohammad Raad, leader of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, was quoted as saying by Hezbollah’s Al Manar television.
Russia said a team of parliamentary observers from countries mostly sympathetic to Assad had found the poll fair, free and transparent, and criticized nations that denounced the vote.
Yasin Aktay, head of the foreign affairs department of Turkey’s ruling AK Party, said elections in Syria were “a complete comedy.”
“In Syria there was an election without ballot boxes, nobody could see where they put the ballot boxes,” Aktay said.