Flocking into Ballot Boxes

No air is more pure and fresh than that of Damascus! Damascus, like many other Syrian cities, is today dressed with the jasmine of beauty, shielded with the valiant Army and Security forces. Strolling the streets of Damascus, I have indeed and immensely enjoyed the glittering of the capital of steadfastness, amity and fraternity.

It is the day of the Parliamentarian elections and the Syrians are since the early hours flocking into ballot centers. The pictures , banners, and national mottos do decorate the streets of the world’s  most continuously inhabited capital. Being uprooted from my motherland in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, it is at Halbouni electoral center where I am eligible to vote.

 My wife, a Damascene, defied me jokingly that she will vote only for one of her relatives. Congratulations I said, particularly after my lawyer, daughter Dima,  opted to vote for some of her friends. Yes,. It is indeed a remarkably day in the life of the Syrians, who have proved to be the immune people of victory, unity, coherence and nationalism. Following years of foreign-backed terrorists attacks, the Syrians go to ballot boxes to choose, among  some 3,500 candidates, their MPs in Syria’s 250-member People’s Assembly.

More than 7000 polling centers, scattered all over the country, are open for at least 12 hours to choose the representatives of the Syrians, who are only capable and legitimate to define and opt for the best in the interest of the Syrians, who have at least 12 percent of their Assembly members seats for elected women; a percent unmatched for even in some EU parliaments!

The latest elections to the Syrian legislature were held in May 2012 with 51-percent voter turnout, or 5 million people who cast their vote, according to the Syrian election committee.

Parliamentary elections do  show the size of political forces in Syria. As H.E. President Bashar Al-Assad outlined in last March interview with Russian media,  the Syrians ”think first of all about their lives, about their security, and then about living conditions, their children’s education and about their health.”

 Thus, the Syrians flocking into ballot boxes is but a true  reflection for what they, living under hard and unbearable hardships, sanctions and sufferings imposed by the ongoing foreign-backed terrorism, need, aspire to and more clearly for their determination, along with their Army, true friends, brothers and President, to eliminate and cleanse the foreign-backed Al-Qaeda affiliates, and on behalf of the entire globe!

Dr. Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim

alibrahim56@hotmail.com