On May 4th the Syrian supreme constitutional court announced three candidates had been “accepted” to run for the office of the presidency – among them current Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
The other two candidates are Maher Abdul-Hafiz Hajjar and Hassan al-Nouri, a parliamentarian and former parliamentarian respectively.
According to Xinhua, court spokesman Amjad al-Khadra said they accepted these three out of 24 applicants who wanted to run for the office on June 3rd.
Hajjar and Al-Nouri “haven’t been publicly known ahead of the elections,” and now they face Assad in his bid for a third term as president.
Assad assumed the office in 2000 by unanimous parliamentary appointment “following the death of his father.” He was “re-elected without opposition in 2007.” The Syrian opposition says the “timing of the presidential polls” is suspect, describing the election as a “parody of democracy.”
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