{"id":6399,"date":"2012-02-26T19:41:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T02:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=6399"},"modified":"2012-02-26T19:41:54","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T02:41:54","slug":"syrians-vote-on-constitution-opposition-boycotts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=6399","title":{"rendered":"Syrians Vote on Constitution; Opposition Boycotts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Syrians Vote on Constitution; Opposition Boycotts<\/strong>
\n26 February, 2012 – POMED<\/p>\n

The new constitution calls for a multi-party parliamentary election within three months, which the Syrian government has pushed forward as a sign of reform, but that many have rejected as \u201cfraudulent.\u201d The U.S. has dismissed the referendum as \u201claughable,\u201d while Turkey\u2019s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu expressed doubt about the timing of the vote: \u201cOn one hand you say you are holding a referendum and on the other you are attacking with tank fire on civilian areas.\u201d While Syrian state TV showed polling stations in Damascus to be peaceful, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported new violence around the country that left dozens of civilians and security forces dead. \u201cWhat should we be voting for, whether to die by bombardment or by bullets? This is the only choice we have,\u201d said Waleed Fares, an activist in the Khalidiyah district of Homs. Prime Minister Adel Safar, when asked about the referendum boycott, said it showed a lack of interest in engaging in dialogue, and added, \u201cIf there was a genuine desire for reform, there would have been movement from all groups, especially the opposition, to start dialogue immediately with the government to achieve the reforms and implement them on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council has reached out to the Alawite community, and in a recent press release announced, \u201cWe in the SNC consider members of the Alawite sect to be an essential element of Syria\u2019s cultural and ethnic fabric. It is shameful for us, the people of an undivided nation, to target a community by name instead of calling upon their national citizenship. However, this is the result of the regime\u2019s actions.\u201d Additionally, Jordan has announced that more than 80,000 Syrian refugees have fled the nearly 11 months of violence in their homeland and settled in neighboring Jordan. The unnamed official said the estimate was based on legal entries into Jordan, and that it is a testament to the growing violence in Syria. …source<\/a><\/p>\n

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Syrians Vote on Constitution; Opposition Boycotts 26 February, 2012 – POMED The new constitution calls for a multi-party parliamentary election within three months, which the Syrian government has pushed forward as a sign of reform, but that many have rejected as \u201cfraudulent.\u201d The U.S. has dismissed the referendum as \u201claughable,\u201d while Turkey\u2019s Foreign Minister Ahmet more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2566],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6400,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399\/revisions\/6400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}