The United States does not take seriously a desicion by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hold parliamentary elections in the country hit by flagrant violence, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Tuesday.
“Parliamentary elections for a rubber-stamp parliament in the middle of the kind of violence that we're seeing across the country is ridiculous,” Nuland told reporters in Washington.
Assad, who is facing unprecedented international pressure to end his crackdown on protesters that has claimed thousands of lives, announced earlier on Tuesday that the parliamentary vote will take place in Syria on May 7.
The elections will be the first polls under the country’s new constitution which enables representatives of all registered parties to run for parliamentary seats. The new legislation, designed to end the ruling Ba’ath party’s monopoly of power, was approved in a referendum on February 27, almost a year after an outbreak of popular protests against Assad’s authoritarian rule.
Anti-government forces, who are pressing for Assad’s resignation, refuse to recognize the new constitution’s legitimacy and are unlikely to run in the polls.
