On billboards and in posters taped to car windows, new portraits of President Bashar Assad filled the streets of Damascus on Sunday as Syria officially opened its presidential campaign despite a crippling civil war that has devastated the country and left large chunks of territory outside of Government control.
The Syrian Opposition and its Western allies have denounced the June 3 election as a sham designed to lend Assad, who is widely expected to win another seven-year term, a veneer of electoral legitimacy. The Government, meanwhile, has touted the vote as the political solution to the conflict. With the country so bitterly divided, it remains unclear how the government intends to hold a credible vote in the middle of the conflict.