That’s how the Syrian Interior Minister described this week’s Syrian parliamentary elections, in which – surprise, surprise – the Ba’ath ruling party won:
The rubber-stamp legislature is likely to consolidate the rule of President Bashar Assad, who is expected to seek its nomination to run for a second seven-year term in July. There had been no doubt about the outcome, because the constitution guarantees the Baath Party and its allies a two-thirds majority in the parliament.
[ . . . ]
Interior Minister Bassam Abdel-Majid said the National Progressive Front, a grouping of 10 political parties led by Assad’s Baath Party, won 172 seats in the 250-member parliament in the tightly controlled elections on Sunday and Monday, an increase of five seats.
Abdel-Majid said the remaining 78 seats went to independents, who have to be approved by the government under Syrian law, and rarely challenge the administration.
Yes, we can clearly see how an election in which the ruling party is guaranteed to win, independents are hand-picked by the ruling party, and dissidents are barred from running or imprisoned, is free, democratic, transparent, and fair. That’s the kind of logic that apparently only applies in Syria… or maybe in Nancy Pelosi’s mind.
Until we start linking US diplomacy with the demand for INTERNAL reforms in Syria, we are wasting our time. It’s not enough to require a country to make changes in its external international policies. It’s how a country treats its own people that affects how it treats its neighbors.