YESTERDAY, millions of Syrians were casting their votes in record numbers in parliamentary elections against the backdrop of a ceasefire that is generally holding, in a country that has had a major war imposed on it since 2012 by the UK, US and France, aided by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey which supplied the cash for the war and many of the ‘insurgents’.
Polling stations opened at 7am and were due to stay open until 7pm with an extension for five more hours because of the record numbers of voters expected to turn out. With more than 7,300 polling stations set up across the the country, the Syrian people are electing members of the 250-seat parliament from 3,500 candidates.
A number of opposition parties are running in the race, but the ruling Ba’ath party is expected to prevail, especially after the great victory of the retaking of Palmyra from the IS brigands. We are sure that millions of British workers and workers throughout the world will congratulate the Syrian people on their elections, and salute their courage and the courage of the Syrian army and people’s militias that fought the ‘insurgents’ to a standstill, and then with the help of the Russian air force, the Hezbollah militia and Iranian advisers drove IS back to Raqqa.
In fact, it was the determination of British workers to oppose any UK intervention into the war, to give active UK support to the counter-revolutionaries as the UK had done in Libya, that also helped turn the tide. This opposition persuaded Cameron not to put the issue of intervention to a vote in the House of Commons, and this completely undermined Obama who did not want to go it alone!
Nevertheless, the imperialist powers and their agents fought brutally to smash the Ba’athist government in Syria, and created hundreds of thousands of corpses and millions of refugees in the process, but they were completely unable to break the back of the Syrian army and the Syrian people. Yesterday in Damascus, there was understandably a mood of elation at the polling stations. A smiling President Bashar al-Assad and his wife were welcomed by cheering crowds as they cast their ballots in Damascus, and spoke to voters at the polling station.
Walls across the capital Damascus were covered with campaign posters. From the top of one of the city’s tallest buildings, a lead banner proclaimed the polls as: ‘The Elections of Resistance’. The polls coincide with the beginning of a second round of UN-brokered indirect talks between the Syrian government and the opposition in Geneva, with the future of President Assad said to be a key sticking point with the imperialist powers.
Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Muallem, has said the fate of President Assad remains a ‘red line’ for the Syrian government in the Geneva talks. It also remains a red line for the masses of the Syrian people. They have not stood fast against the barbarian hordes mustered by imperialism to allow their victory to be stolen off them at the negotiating table in Geneva.
Embracing ‘The Elections of Resistance’, the masses are determined that they are the masters of Syria and only they will decide who is to make up their government, and who is to be their president!
Talks held by the major powers cannot decide who is to make up the government and be the president of Syria. On this issue, the Syrian masses of the resistance are unanimous. They are now determined to march forwards and retake the parts of the country where IS and other agents of imperialism are hanging on.
There is no doubt that the Syrian masses will triumph. They will win back all of their country, and their victory will strengthen the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, and enormously strengthen the Palestinian revolution that seeks to liberate their country from the Zionist gangsters to establish the state of Palestine, where Arabs, Jews and Christians can live side by side, in peace, as they did in Syria, and will do so once again in the near future.
UK workers must welcome the Syrian elections as a victory not just for the Syrian people, but also as their victory, since the Cameron government that insists that Assad must go, also insists that the same fate awaits the NHS and the Welfare State at home!
