Constitutional Referendum

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Constitutional Referendum

Syrian authorities are counting on Monday the ballots of the referendum held on Sunday on constitutional change. The voting had to be extended, the authorities in Damascus said, in order to accommodate the huge turnout to the polls. 14,185 polling stations were opened across the country, and the vote was extended to 10 p.m. as the state television showed long lines of people waiting to cast ballots. The opposition boycotted the referendum, and the military continued its crackdown on the people for the duration of the ballots, causing at least 65 people to die on Sunday alone.

The vote was called by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle a “farce,” as the German leader added that “phony votes will not contribute to solving the problem.”

The referendum is said to fulfil the promise of the president Assad, who said that by the referendum the constitution is to be changed so that it may state the democratic elections and a limitation of the mandate to two seven-year terms.

The Baath party, which backs the power of Bashar al-Assad, has been the only party to rule the country since 1963, when it came to power through a coup.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that turnout to the referendum was low in many areas, and added that the boycott of the opposition was meant to send a message that the population was not agreeing to the regime’s rule.

Participating in such a referendum, they said, would mean a recognition of the regime who is being accused by the activists in the field of having killed as much as 8,500 people in 11 months of conflict.

The death toll has increased over the last weeks, as the international pressure on the regime grew, and the violent crackdown intensified. The Arab League proposed a few weeks ago the president to step down, hand power to the deputy, and organize free elections.

The AL proposal became a resolution embraced by the UN Security Council, which voted on it on February 4. The vote was foiled by Russia and China, which vetoed it on the grounds that their amendments were not taken into account.

Russia was proposing that the responsibility for what happened in Syria to be equally distributed to both government and the people in the streets, and that no sanctions be imposed on Syria.

The wording of the draft, the Russian complained, allows the NATO to interpret it the way they interpreted the resolution on Libya, and to support the Syrian rebels with weapons, as they did with the Libyan NTC.

Russia went on a mission to ensure that the regime puts and end to violence and returns to the negotiation table, but all it succeeded in obtaining in Damascus was the promise that the AL mission can continue, in spite of the fact that the Arab League had suspended it earlier, because of its lack of serious results.

Two weeks ago, however, the resolution drafted by the Arab League was voted in the UN General Assembly, a body without binding power, but with a strong symbolic message. Russia and China voted against the resolution, but they had no veto power this time, so that the resolution was passed.

The United States, and the European and Arab nations convened last Friday in Tunis in a meeting called “Friends of Syria,” which took into account the possibility to help the opposition somehow.

In a very enigmatic statement, US State Secretary Hillary Clinton said that the rebels would find “somehow, somewhere” weapons to battle the regime. Saudi Arabia and Qatar demanded that weapons be sent to the rebels, while the Obama administration and Morocco, Tunisia and Bahrain said that the conflict should not be militarized any further.

The meeting in Tunis agreed that new sanctions should be imposed on the Syrian regime, causing Damascus to call the entire meeting an assembly of the “enemies of Syria.”

On Monday, European Union applied new sanctions on Syria, referring to freezing the assets of some Syrian officials, the imposing of sanctions on the Syrian central bank, the halt of purchase of gold and gems, and the banning of Syrian cargo flights.

The names of the Syrian officials whose assets have been frozen will be made public on Tuesday. The prior set of sanctions the EU has slapped on Syria is yet to be evaluated as to the effects it produced.

The British foreign secretary William Hague expressed the European frustration with the position of Russia and China, who have continued to support the regime of their ally. French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he would approach the subject in talks with Moscow and Beijing.

It would seem that the position of Russia is also politically motivated, as by it the prime minister Putin shows his constituents that Russia is a major player at international level and that things get done the way Russia wants. Syria is the only country Russia still has a military base after the Soviet Union was disbanded, and is a special trade partner in trades like weapons.

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