Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma (R) cast their votes in the country’s presidential elections at a polling station in Damascus June 3, 2014, in this handout released by Syria’s national news agency SANA.

DAMASCUS — Bashar al-Assad has won a landslide victory in the Syrian presidential poll with 88.7 percent of the vote. This will secure him a third seven-year term in office amidst a bloody civil war, which stemmed from protests against his rule.

“I declare the victory of Dr. Bashar Hafez Assad as president of the Syrian Arab Republic with an absolute majority of the votes cast in the election,” parliament speaker Mohammad Laham said in a televised address from his office in the Syrian parliament on Wednesday, June 3.

A total of 10.2 million people voted for Assad, according to state media. The voter turnout stood at 73.42 percent, Syrian state television said. 

No violations have been reported, Syria’s Higher Judicial Committee for Elections said as quoted by SANA news agency.

Syrian officials said the result was a vindication of Assad’s three-year campaign against those fighting to topple him.

Despite the high turnout figures, residents of some areas in the country’s north and east were obstructed from voting by rebel forces.

The conflict in Syria has already killed 160,000 people and created nearly 3 million refugees, as well as displacing more people inside Syria.

“This is our duty, we can’t allow people from outside the country to decide for us. Our duty is to vote – or order to protect our country,” Usam Hammami, a resident in the capital Damascus said.

At the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, thousands of people stood in the sun in a tightly packed queue to vote at a polling station set up for Syrians inside Lebanon.

All those who spoke to Reuters said they planned to vote for Assad.

“I came and made the decision to do this for the sake of myself and my country,” said Ghada Makki, 43. “It is a national duty to vote so that we overcome the crisis happening in Syria.”

Rebel fighters, the political opposition in exile, Western powers and Gulf Arabs say no credible vote can be held in a country where swathes of territory are outside state control and millions have been displaced by conflict.

State television showed long queues of people waiting to vote at polling stations in areas under state control, as well as crowds waving flags and portraits of the president. Assad, looking relaxed and wearing a dark blue suit and light blue tie, voted at a central Damascus polling station with his wife Asma.

Islamist insurgents battling to overthrow the 48-year-old president, who has ruled Syria since succeeding his father 14 years ago, dismissed the vote as “illegitimate.”

But the Islamic Front and allied groups pledged not to target polling stations and urged other rebels to do the same.

Damascus residents said mortar shells struck residential areas in the capital on Tuesday, most likely fired from rebel suburbs. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Assad is running against two relatively unknown challengers who were approved by a parliament packed with his supporters, the first time in half a century that Syrians have been offered a choice of candidates.

But neither of Assad’s rivals, former minister Hassan al-Nouri or parliamentarian Maher Hajjar, enjoys much support.

“It’s a tragic farce,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “The Syrians in a zone controlled by the Syrian government have a choice of Bashar or Bashar. This man has been described by the U.N. Secretary General as a criminal,” he told France 2 television.

The United States also issued a condemnation. “Today’s presidential election in Syria is a disgrace,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a briefing in Washington.

“Detached from reality and devoid of political participation, the Assad regime’s staged election today continued a 40-year family legacy of violent suppression that brutally crushes political dissent and fails to fulfil Syrians’ aspirations for peace and prosperity,” Harf said.

Assad’s ally Russia  said on Thursday that observers had found the presidential election in which Bashar al-Assad retained power to have been fair, free and transparent, and criticized nations that denounced the vote.

“Moscow sees the vote as an important event that safeguards the continued functioning of state institutions in Syria,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters at a briefing.

He said the election was “naturally not 100 percent democratic” due to the conflict in Syria, but that turnout, transparency and the findings of foreign monitors “give us no reason to question the legitimacy of the election.”

“Against this background, the … politicized reaction to the election from some of our international partners cannot fail to cause disillusionment,” he said. “It is unacceptable to ignore the views of millions of Syrians.”

 —RT, Reuters, TAAN