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Domestic opposition in Syria has said that Presidential polls in the war-torn country scheduled to be held on June 3rd will only worsen the political divide in the country and boost the “arrogance” of the regime. President Bashar Assad is widely expected to win the poll, which the West and exiled rebels have called a “farce”.
Opposition leader Louay Hussein said that the election will “divide the Syrian people into two different races: one that votes and the other a terrorist race that has not participated”, using the term given by the regime to rebels. He added that the vote will “also increase the arrogance of a regime that has stolen the people’s money, freedom, blood and soul”.
Hussein is the only dissident tolerated by the regime that has publicly called for a boycott of the election. The opposition leader and the leader of the Building the Syrian State movement is a former member of the communist party in Syria. He was in prison from 1984 to 1991, and was briefly detained in 2011 after he expressed solidarity with protesters in the province of Daraa, the focal point of anti-Assad revolts.
Louay Hussein also criticized the way the vote was organized by the authorities. “It’s not the voters’ responsibility to guarantee safe access to voting stations. It isn’t possible to have an election in which only those with access will participate”, he said. Large parts of the country are either controlled by rebels or have become full-blown war zones. On Thursday, rebel forces shelled an election rally for Assad in Deraa. 21 people were killed in the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Hussein set up the Building the Syrian State movement in Damascus in September 2011. The members of the movement can only campaign online. “We do not have any tools. The Syrian (state) media is not open to us, and we risk arrest or beatings if we take to the street”, he said.