Syria sets date for presidential vote

Syrian elections will be held on 3 June, the country's parliamentary speaker announced on Monday. Hopeful candidates will have until 1 May to register their intent to run.

The plans for the country's first presidential elections - constitutional amendments did away with the old referendum system - comes despite a devastating civil war which has killed more than 150,000 people since 2011, with rebels holding large swathes of territory.

President Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years, is widely expected to win the vote. Most opposition candidates are believed to have been disqualified from the vote, due to the strict residency and other requirements introduced by the regime.

"Elections for the president of the Syrian Arab Republic for Syrians resident in the country will be held on June 3 from 7am to 7pm," said Mohammad al-Lahham, Speaker of the People's Council of Syria, during a special session of parliament.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition condemned the election announcement and said it should be "treated as a farce and be rejected by the international community," according to a statement released Monday. "There is no electorate in Syria in a condition to exercise its right to vote, even if there had been actual elections."

"This announcement is a state of separation from reality, a state of denial," said Monzer Akbik, chief of staff to the President of the Syrian Opposition Coalition. “Assad didn’t have any legitimacy before this theatrical election, and he still won’t have any legitimacy after it.”

The statement also criticised the requirements for candidates to run for office, namely that they must have lived in Syria for the past 10 years and be nominated by 35 members of parliament, "thus ensuring nobody in the opposition could even attempt to run," it said.

Al-Lahham said Syrians living outside the country will be able to vote on 28 May, saying candidates for the presidency could register to run from Tuesday until 1 May.

The government has not laid out how it plans to hold elections under the circumstances, although the vote has been criticised by the UN which fears that elections could endanger fragile peace talks that collapsed earlier this year, but many hope will be revived. 

Most comments on Twitter following the announcement questioned the legitimacy of the process.

Meanwhile, the United Nations sharply criticized Syria's decision to hold the presidential election in the midst of war, saying it would torpedo a political resolution of the conflict.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon and special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi have both warned against elections in the current circumstances, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

They believe it "will damage the political process and hamper the prospect for a political solution that the country so urgently needs," he said.

"Such elections are incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Geneva communique," he added, referring to an agreement on a transition to democracy as the basis for negotiations between the government and the opposition.

In mid March, Brahimi warned that presidential elections would mean the demise of negotiations to put an end to three years of war.

The Syrian opposition has dismissed the elections as a "farce" and said they should be rejected by the international community.

More than 150,000 people have died in the conflict, according to a Syrian NGO, and millions more have been pushed from their homes and turned into refugees.