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Damascus, April 19 (IANS) The Syrian presidential elections will be held in May, seven years after the last polls took place in the war-torn country, the country's Parliament announced.
Addressing Parliament on Sunday, Speaker Hamoudeh Sabbagh said the commencement of candidacy for elections will begin from Monday onwards, Xinhua news agency reported.
Sabbagh called on those who wish to run to submit their candidacy applications to the Supreme Constitutional Court within a period of 10 days which ends on April 28.
The Speaker added that the Election Day for the Syrians abroad is set on May 20, while for the citizens inside the country, it will be held on May 26.
"I call upon Syrians to practice their right in choosing the President of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said.
Some of the requirements to become a presidential candidate under Syrian law are the person must be a Muslim; has to be 40 years and above; be a Syrian Arab nationality by birth; must not be convicted of any crime; not have a foreign spouse; and must not carry any other nationality.
Candidates must also have the backing of at least 35 members of Parliament, which is dominated by incumbent President Bashar al-Assad's Baath party.
Meanwhile, the President, who took office following the death of his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000, is yet to make an official announcement if he was going to contest.
In the uncontested 2000 and 2007 elections, he received 97.29 per cent and 97.6 per cent support, respectively.
Amid the raging conflict, Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for another seven-year term in July 2014 after another non-democratic election gave him 88.7 per cent of the vote.
The Syrian crisis entered its 10th year in March this year.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 6.2 million people, including 2.5 million children, displaced within Syria as a result of the war, the biggest internally displaced population in the world.
According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at 387,118 people have been killed as of December 2020, among them 116,911 civilians.
There were 205,300 people missing or presumed dead, including 88,000 civilians believed to have died of torture in government-run prisons.
--IANS
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