BBC Online :
Syria is holding a presidential election in government-held areas, amid heightened security. President Bashar al-Assad is widely expected to win a third seven-year term in office.
However, critics of the Syrian government have denounced the election as a farce.
Syria is three years into a civil war in which tens of thousands of people have died and millions more have been displaced.
Analysts say Syrian officials have gone to great lengths to present the vote as a way to resolve the crisis.
This is the first time in decades that more than one name – just a member of the Assad family – has appeared on the ballot paper.
Correspondents say the other two candidates – Maher Hajjar and Hassan al-Nouri – are not widely known and have been unable to campaign on an equal footing with the president.
No votes will be cast, and there won’t be a single ballot box, in what opposition supporters call “liberated” areas.
The practical reason is that voting would mean allowing access for the agents of the regime. But the emotive reason is that people involved with the uprising would regard casting a vote while the regime’s bombs are falling as an act of treason.
In towns and villages in Idlib over the weekend, people told me the election meant nothing to them: President Assad was a “butcher”, a mass murderer – and anyway the regime would steal the election to give him 99% of the poll.
