Assad Wins Syrian Election with 88.7% of Vote

"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.

A total of 10.2 million people voted for Assad. The voter turnout stood at 73.42 percent. 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 get rid of him, RT reported.

This was the first multi-candidate presidential election in Syria for almost 50 years. The other two candidates for the top post were Hassan Abdullah Nouri, from the National Initiative for Administration and Change in Syria, and Maher Abd Al-Hafiz Hajjar, formerly from the People's Will Party.

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

But while the foreign-backed opposition groups inside Syria and most countries in the West have denounced the election as a sham, many Syrians are supporting President Assad and see him as the only option to return stability to the country.

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. The UN says more than 130,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the unrest in 2011. More than 2.2 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries while an estimated 4.25 million have been displaced internally.