| The Syrian Arab Republic held its presidential election on June 3, 2014. According to the U.S., a good election is one that lives up to imperialist expectations and desires. Syria instead held true to the efforts of the people to take their stand against imperialist intervention and U.S.-style democracy, with the elections being one part of the on-going struggle of Syrians to resist U.S. imperialism. The election also further revealed the crisis of legitimacy faced by the U.S., whose wars, occupations and unleashing of terrorists cannot stop resistance and the drive of the peoples to affirm their rights. Imperial Legitimacy and Popular Legitimacy According to the Supreme Constitutional Court, the legal body that oversaw the election process, 11,634,412 of the 15,845,575 eligible Syrian voters over the age of 18 voted - a 73.42% turnout. This included large segments of those who had been displaced internally or externally, the number of whom is estimated to account for about one-third of the population. Most of the 7 million displaced are internal refugees. The figures also included Syrian expatriates in countries where voting was not blocked (as occurred in the U.S. and Canada). The elections were monitored by observes from 32 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). They issued a joint statement affirming the elections as free, fair and valid. Incumbent Bashar al-Assad won 88.7% of the vote, while the other two runners - Hassan Annouri and Maher Hajjar - received 4.3% and 3.2% respectively. Another 3.8% of the votes were invalid or blank. Syrians outside the country got to vote first - at a total of 43 embassies across the world. Voters in neighboring Lebanon - where 1.1 million Syrian refugees live, turned up in huge numbers to take part in the elections. Their sheer number brought traffic on highways leading to the embassy compound in Beirut to a halt. Even the embassy staff were surprised and voting had to be extended. A similar situation was at hand at the Syrian Embassy in Amman, Jordan, where large numbers of Syrian refugees also live. Inside the country, voting was also extended late into the night due to the large turnout. In many parts of the country people celebrated Election Day with rallies and dancing, but also with gunfire - a ritual common in many countries in the Levant but which has become more widespread since the Syrian crisis began. Many people also posed for pictures proudly sporting the semi-permanent election ink on a finger or two. Some considered this election significant as it was the first multi-candidate election since 1953. However, even as one of the candidates put it, people recognized that the election was between Syria and its enemies, not between the candidates. It can be said that for Western imperialist eyes, the sight of endless lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots in the Syrian elections must have been as unintelligible as medieval Indians using palm leaves as ballots to elect members of village assemblies in Tamil Nadu. If ancient Rome and Athens were and remain the model for pre-modern electoral practices, Western and Western-style elections must serve as a model in the present times. A "lineage of democracy" that defies interruption, or so the dominating narrative goes. Imperialist Claim of Coercion Despite the high turn-out, rallies and broad support publicly expressed by the people, U.S. imperialism dismissed the Syrian election as "illegitimate," a "fraud," and a "disgrace." In making this claim, the U.S. is quite true to how it construes the question of legitimacy: not as essentially inherent to the principles of sovereignty and self- determination, but as something the imperialists bestow on those they decide merit it. This effort to brand the election is illegitimate has been three-pronged. Firstly was the claim that the elections were illegitimate because the government tightly controlled them and people were coerced or intimidated into participating in the vote. The outpouring of voters in Lebanon, for instance, did not register with imperialist media outlets, which chose to either ignore the matter altogether or portray the masses lined up to cast their votes as part of a generalized frenzy where an individual's capacity to vote rationally was somehow prevented. The sheer impossibility of the Syrian state security apparatuses managing to coerce such a large majority of voters inside the country, let alone at the 43 embassies abroad, evidently also did not register. That not everyone who voted was an Assad supporter was another aspect ignored. Many who turned up to take part in the elections were among the opposition in the earlier stages of the crisis and who came to reject how the whole affair transformed into an imperialist proxy war against the Syrian people and state in the name of "regime change." These voted to affirm that they stood for the sovereignty and independence of their country. It mattered more to vote in defiance of the many actions and threats by the U.S. and the violence of the terrorists backed by them, which included the shelling of polling stations. In other words, people voted for the state against intervention by U.S. imperialism and its reactionary Arab footmen. The elections were branded "illegitimate" despite the large overall turnout of 73.42%. Compare this with figures from the Egyptian presidential election - 47.5%. The Obama regime and U.S. allies markedly applauded Egypt's election, while dismissing Syria's. The much prized discourse of democracy and human rights also need not apply where the Egyptian military is concerned. Elections During War Time Another layer of "illegitimacy" was holding the elections while the war raged on, which was echoed by the UN Secretary General himself. However, the 2005 Iraqi general elections and the 2004 Afghani presidential elections were held not only during fighting but also under colonial occupations. The U.S. regarded them as significant "benchmarks" on the road of enabling the natives to take matters into their own hands, to come of age democratically. This is a narrative reminiscent of backward and racist colonialist designations of the colonized as deficient and immature and "requiring" colonization. In the language of the Obama Doctrine, "Syria had no right to hold elections amidst war" naturally translates into "Syria has no right to be sovereign." Countries like the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed this dictate by blocking Syrians from voting at Syrian embassies there. The U.S., which has orchestrated and carried out coups, imposed unlawful and criminal sanctions and embargoes that strangle peoples and economies, denied and undermined African-American voting at home, and funded and backed campaigns to destabilize and fragment countries the world over, is in no position to preach democracy to the world. U.S. Effort to Brand Syrian Resistance as Illegitimate The final aspect of "illegitimacy" is to deny that the Syrian people have stood their ground in the face of imperialist aggression and foiled the many attempts to strip away Syrian sovereignty, including through unleashing terrorists (such as those of the Wahabi type) all under the banner of "regime change" and "humanitarian interventionism." For the U.S., resistance is "illegitimate," and so is any nation-building project that seeks political and economic independence, whether in Africa, Latin America or the Middle East. At the same time, U.S. actions make clear that funding and training extremists who commit heinous crimes against the people of Syria is "legitimate." Recruiting "jihadists" from 87 countries to wreck the country is also "legitimate." Equally "legitimate" is the systematic targeting of hospitals, power plants and substations, highways and infrastructure - all U.S. crimes. Dismantling more than 10,000 factories in Aleppo, the industrial capital of Syria, and moving them into Turkey, a key member of the NATO military alliance, is "legitimate" too in the eyes of the humanity-loving imperialists. The European Union even partially lifted the sanctions imposed on Syria to enable the re-flow of oil from fields under the control of al-Qaida offshoots. This is a significant source of revenue that is said to have been used to expand and finance the carnage these terrorists have been carrying out in Syria, and now once again in Iraq. According to current estimates, the Syrian economy has shrunk by more than 45% with unemployment impacting almost half of the population. Close to 8 million Syrians have fallen into poverty with 4.4 million living in conditions of extreme poverty. According to the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the economic impact of the war against the people of Syria has been "tantamount to wholesale de-industrialization." For the international imperialist oligarchies led by the U.S., all this systemic destruction of a nation is justifiable while resistance or anti-hegemonic projects the people advance are criminalized. The "right to protect" - a staple in the Obama Doctrine, has aimed at displacing the right to sovereignty, which has been so integral to managing international relations since the end of WWII. Sovereignty and self- determination are internationally recognized collective rights, vested in member states by the UN Charter. Their enshrinement in law arose out of the defeat of Nazism and Fascism in World War II and the demand of the peoples to prevent more wars and expand and modernize democracy. The imperialists, in their arrogance, are blind to the reality that sovereign and independent states hold elections not as an affair that satisfies others - as a performance for the imperialists - but rather, these states call on their populace to vote as an expression of the right to self-determination and defense of sovereignty. The U.S. is acting to end such defiance, and, as examples worldwide show, does not hesitate to try and decimate peoples using sectarian and ethnic lines, proxy warfare and outright colonization and destruction. The Syrian people are rejecting Obama's plans for more chaos, devastation and war. The right to self-determination and the right to sovereignty is the platform of the struggle of the Syrian people today against imperialist intervention and aggression. And casting a ballot in the recent presidential elections was one of the many facets of this on-going struggle. |