Thread by @bobfrombrockley

A thread on this week’s presidential “election” in Syria:

The Syrian government says 14 million people voted, 95% for Assad. The population is 18 m but 40% are under 18. 3-4 m live in opposition areas, 2 m in autonomous Kurdish lands, neither of which voted...

...Expatriates could vote if they left the country legally, but not in Turkey or Germany. Less than 1/24 the 1.2 m refugees in Lebanon voted.

I’m not great at maths but that looks to me like something like twice as many people voted as there are people eligible to vote.

The ballot paper had no names on it, just pictures. And two of the candidates were completely unknown.

This is the official Twitter account for one of the candidates in Syria’s presidential election. 28 followers. There was literally no campaign.

And just in case you have any doubt whatsoever about who to vote for, the president’s poster is on the front of the bus that takes you to the polling station.

Thousands and thousands spent on billboards of the dictator, while the country is in ruins.

The Syrian elections: No pretence at a secret ballot. Officials simply vote for people while they watch.

Industrials scale voting for the dear leader. (Believed to be 132nd brigade in occupied Deraa.)

Slowing it down: officials just fill in the ballots. (Via @nouraaljizawi)

The ballot papers are literally just photocopies.

Loyalists voting at multiple polling stations.

What is significant is that obviously unfree voting was being shown on election day *on state TV*. There is no attempt to pretend. Which is because this election, for the domestic audience, was pure theatre: the spectacle of domination.

This is official Syrian state TV as well. The officials watch how are you vote before you put your paper in the ballot box.

And this, with the official doing the voting

This is what I mean by a spectacle of domination. It was a ritual in which loyalty to the dictator was demonstrated. It’s the opposite of democratic legitimacy.

Selfies with a ballot paper marked for the president, ideally in blood, a way of showing the secret police that you were compliant.

Meanwhile for the foreign audience, it is about projecting stability come out in order to rehabilitate the regime with the Gulf autocracies. Hence “election observers”, from such well-known free democracies as Belarus and Oman (a hereditary sultanate).

This is also why Assad welcomes visits by western “journalists” who will project western-friendly images of secular/Christian normality, security, stability and recovery during the election.

Despite extraordinary dangers, courageous people in former free towns now occupied by the regime bravely protested on Election Day. This is Maraat al-Numan, One of the most bombed towns in the world, which was recaptured in 2020

and this is occupied Daraa in the south

and this is Tafas in Daraa

Because crushing resistance is the primary imperative for the dictatorship, the location where the president voted was highly symbolic: Douma, a city which held out, bombed again & again, including chemical weapons.

(Which makes it multiply offensive that Assad’s western propagandists are broadcasting from Douma.)

And despite the obvious fraudulence and illegitimacy of these elections, some apparently smart people in the west are taken in by them...

That’s it. Please listen to Syrian voices too, such as those in the list below. Particular thanks to @m_alneser for many of the films above

twitter.com/i/lists/913691…

One more: this guy, a pro-Assad activist who lives in Germany and works for the fascist AfD, acknowledges that his leader’s voting in ruined Douma is an act of pure trolling (trolling of the victims of Assad’s counter-revolution).

This is what rehabilitation looks like. A regime which has deliberately targeted health facilities as acts of war, again & again, voted into the execution of a UN health organisation. We mustn’t allow the world to act like Syria is a normal state.

But apparently public health measures to control a pandemic are very bit as fascist as bombing hospitals, using chemical weapons and claiming that the twice as many people voted for the president as are eligible to vote. 🤷🏽‍♂️

This saying is an excellent summary of what Assad did by voting for himself in Douma (or what his PR agent Aaron did by making videos exonerating his brutality in Douma and Yarmouk)