Photo: JOSEPH EID/2010 AFP
With 88.7 percent of the vote, despot Bashar al-Assad has won a third term as Syria’s president, even as he presides over an ongoing civil war. As inflated as Assad’s vote total seems, this was actually the first presidential election in decades to include more than one name on the ballot. The election was still a sham: Voting took place in government-controlled portions of the country and his opponents were nobodies with no chance. Still, Assad managed to lose more than 11 percent of the vote. As far as election totals for brutal dictators go, that’s actually pretty embarrassing.
