Foreign Policy quotes Rafik Hariri Center Senior Fellow Frederic Hof on the upcoming Syrian elections:
Whoever else runs, nobody is predicting that the Assad clan’s string of seven straight presidential victories since Hafez al-Assad seized power in a 1970 military coup is about to be broken. While Assad’s enemies jeer the upcoming election and his allies hope it will restore a measure of legitimacy to the regime, others have reacted with little more than a shrug.
“I fearlessly predict there will not be much of a race and he’ll win handily, surprising no one and restoring none of his vanished governing legitimacy,” said Fred Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former top State Department official on Syria. “Besides, if his gunners and barrel bombers get the day off to vote it would be a good thing for a lot of children and their parents.”