By ANNE BARNARD
APRIL 15, 2014
The New York Times
HOMS, Syria — The center of this city is a blockaded, insurgent-held war zone, its skyline jagged with broken concrete. Ringing it is a patchwork of scarred neighborhoods, some functioning but fearful, some crammed with the displaced, others reduced to bombed-out shells where only soldiers move. Much of Homs is scarcely fit for human habitation, never mind a safe and peaceful exercise in democracy.
A portrait of President Bashar al-Assad in Homs, Syria. Mr. Assad has reportedly said, "This year the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended." Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
That did not stop the local governor, Talal al-Barazi, from declaring this broken city ripe for “relatively good elections.” His optimism is shared at the highest levels in Damascus, where officials have declared that a presidential vote will be held within three months, despite the raging war that has driven nine million Syrians from their homes. They expect President Bashar al-Assad to win — even though, for the first time in decades, there will in theory be an opponent on the ballot.
Claiming another seven-year term amid a three-year revolt against his rule would be a remarkable feat of survival for Mr. Assad, embarrassing for his international foes and demoralizing for Syrian opponents who staked their lives, families and towns on his ouster.
An election poster outside Damascus showing President Bashar al-Assad, right, with Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Mr. Assad and his allies have declared with new assurance that insurgents no longer pose a credible threat to overthrow him, a view that many Western diplomats in the region, though they believe the conflict will drag on, have quietly come to share. Even a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of France, one of Mr. Assad’s staunchest opponents, suggested as much last week, saying, “Maybe he will be the sole survivor of this policy of mass crimes.”
Here in Syria, the campaign train is already unofficially rolling, a measure of Mr. Assad’s growing confidence that he is wrapping up the war. A former Russian prime minister, Sergei V. Stepashin, said last week that Mr. Assad had told him, “This year the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended.”
Opponents say elections would be absurd amid a military crackdown that they say has terrorized large segments of the country to suppress a movement for political change. Voting freely in such an atmosphere, they say, is impossible.
“It’s ridiculous,” said one Damascus businessman who is skeptical of the armed opposition but fervently opposes the government. “Only their supporters will vote. It is escalating the situation, not calming it.”
Even Homs, where the government believes it is on the verge of retaking the last four rebel-held neighborhoods in the Old City, is far from normalcy. Guards check for bombs at the entrance of the bustling provincial administration center on the edge of town, where office workers stop in the hallway to tell reporters that they hope Mr. Assad will run for re-election.
Their original offices, in the war-torn Old City, are abandoned. The new building is festooned with towering posters of Mr. Assad and of Homs landmarks in their pristine, prewar state. Among them are the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque, shelled by the government after insurgents took control, and a clock tower damaged during protests and crackdowns, which stands on a once-lively central square now littered with debris and broken glass, empty but for troops and tanks.
“For sure, tomorrow will be better,” the signs say. “We will build it together.”
Last week, two car bombs exploded near a sweets shop in a pro-government neighborhood, killing at least 25 people, including women and children, and wounding paramedics responding to the first blast.
More than 220,000 people from the province of Homs have fled to neighboring Lebanon. People from once-mixed neighborhoods fear returning home. Members of the Alawite minority say they are targeted for supporting the president and belonging to his sect; Sunnis say they fear arbitrary arrest or attack as suspected insurgents. Even in relatively untouched neighborhoods, few venture out after dark.
Despite similar scenes in many cities, Mr. Assad declared in January that he saw “no reason why I shouldn’t” run for president. His supporters say that even in a truly free election, he would handily win. Even some opponents believe he could win a plurality, if only because their fragmented ranks would struggle to unite behind a candidate.
Yet even some with ties to the government are skeptical about holding an election this soon.
“My personal opinion, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Elia Samman, a volunteer adviser to the Ministry of Reconciliation, said recently in Damascus. “I cannot figure out any good reason to go for elections now.”
Many areas are “out of control,” like the insurgent-held north, he noted. More than 2.5 million Syrians have fled the country as refugees. Many embassies are closed, preventing expatriates from voting. Instead of holding elections, Mr. Samman said, Mr. Assad should exercise a constitutional option to extend his term for two years in an emergency.
Mr. Samman, who belongs to a tolerated opposition party, said that Mr. Assad’s re-election, legitimate or not, would make little difference without fundamental political changes.
“I don’t care if Assad is the president or someone else,” he said. “My problem is with the system, the whole regime.”
In 2000, Mr. Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, who had governed since 1971. He was re-elected in 2007, taking 98 percent of the vote as the sole candidate.
A new constitution adopted in 2012 allows multiple candidates, who must declare themselves in the coming weeks. But a new law requires them to have lived in Syria for the past 10 years and to hold no other nationality, disqualifying many opposition figures in exile, some of whom fled political repression.
To claim legitimacy, “they will get somebody out of jail and say, ‘If you don’t run we put you back,’ ” a Western diplomat in the region said, adding that a nominally independent Syrian politician recently said no one would run without “instructions.”
Mr. Assad’s opponents have reacted with predictable outrage.
“A parody of democracy,” fulminated the Friends of Syria, a group of countries, including the United States, that are seeking to oust Mr. Assad. In a statement, the group said the government’s “unilateral decision” would “deepen division in Syria” and kill fading hopes for an internationally backed political transition.
The verdict from the opposition coalition in exile: “Detached from reality.”
But Mr. Assad says elections need no international stamp of legitimacy, and probably cares little that they would finish off the Geneva talks, widely seen as dead. The government aims to resolve the three-year conflict on its own, with no overarching political compromise, by mixing offers of cease-fires, amnesties and reconciliation programs with fierce bombardments of areas that refuse them.
From Homs to Damascus, even in landscapes of crushed and charred buildings, new posters of Mr. Assad are appearing, with an electioneering flavor. Some show him in military regalia, or posing with his ally Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Some look to the past, depicting him with his father; others to the future, emphasizing reconciliation and rebuilding.
Mr. Barazi, the governor of Homs, said fighting and displacement posed no obstacle to a vote. Most of the province, he said, is safe enough for polling, and Syrians can vote outside their home districts.
Refugees, he said, could cast ballots at Syrian border posts, and even people in insurgent-held suburbs of Homs could cross front lines to vote, claims doubted by government opponents fearful of the authorities. In another obstacle, a recent law requires Syrians to return to their homes for new, electronic government identification cards, something many have been afraid to do.
In Damascus, an obstetrician who taught Mr. Assad in medical school said he would vote for him despite believing he is “not 100 percent democratic.”
The alternative is Islamic rule, he said, adding, “Really, there is no other person who can take his place now.”
He said he believed the elections would be legitimate if 75 percent of Syrians voted, even if those unable to vote were disproportionately government opponents. Mr. Assad, he said, would rack up high enough percentages in his strongholds, he said, to win 51 percent of the total electorate.
Besides, he said, autocratic monarchies supporting the opposition lack standing to complain.
“If the Americans said it, they have the right, they have democracy,” he said. “But Qatar or Saudi Arabia never had this right.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on April 16, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Show of Democracy Amid Destruction.
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