MOSCOW, May 30 (RIA Novosti) – Syria's former Deputy Prime Minister and current opposition leader Qadri Jamil has told the Rossiya Segodnya news agency he believes the June 3 presidential election can have a positive effect on the country, which is mired in a 3.5-year-long civil war.
“Our stance is different from that of the external Syrian opposition, who are against the presidential vote – but for a totally different reason. We think that an election, even though it is out of place here, can still do us good. We are and will work to make sure that the majority of the Syrian people come to the polls to express their will,” the politician said.
Jamil arrived in Moscow at the helm of an opposition delegation to discuss the situation in the Arab Republic ahead of the presidential vote with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Jamil is a leader of the Popular Front for Change and Liberation, which is a moderate, home-based opposition movement.
“Both Russian and Syrian sides believe we must do our best to find a political solution to the ongoing crisis as soon as possible,” Jamil said in the interview.
He confessed that Syria’s “interior” and “exterior” opposition groups both believed the current civil war was not an optimal time for a presidential election, but added their movement would stand by President Assad’s side until the crisis was resolved.
“Nothing bad will happen if the acting president carries on performing his duties until more favorable conditions for a presidential election are created,” Jamil told Rossiya Segodnya.
Three candidates are running for the presidency in Syria, including incumbent President Bashar Assad, who has been in power since 2000. The other two candidates are Maher Abdul-Hafiz Hajjar, 43, an ex-Communist Party activist and member of parliament; and Hassan Abdullah Nouri, 54, a Damascus native and former lawmaker, who previously headed Syria's Chamber of Industry.
The vote in the country comes as the Syrian parliament approved in March a new election law, which for the first time in the history of the country would allow several candidates to participate in the vote.
The Syrian parliament is composed of 250 lawmakers, who can only back one candidate each. The law prohibits candidates to hold dual citizenship and stipulates that a Syrian presidential contender must be under 40 years old.
Assad was re-elected to his second term in a nationwide referendum in 2007, in which he garnered 97.62 percent of the votes.
