Former Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri declared yesterday that Tuesday’s re-election of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad was a “farce.”

The Daily Star reported on the politician’s remarks:

“This election was a farce. It was dark, fabricated, bloody, abhorrent and all of the things that senior officials have described it as,” Hariri said in a statement. …

“A few … of Bashar’s partners in death and destruction welcomed the election and fired celebratory gunfire. Other than that, there was an unprecedented consensus that the world had witnessed the worst practice of democracy in history,” he said.

“The world witnessed a democratic lie never seen [before] even in the mightiest of dictatorships … What human mind can tolerate such a lie that 74 percent of Syrians took part in the election?”

According to the totals released by the Syrian government, Assad easily won reelection with 88.7 percent of the vote. Turnout was estimated to be nearly 74 percent despite the ongoing civil war.

Harari’s father, Rafiq, also a former Prime Minister of Lebanon, was killed by a car bomb in 2005. His killing was widely blamed on Syria and Hezbollah, even as Hezbollah continues to interfere with the ongoing international investigation into the assassination.

Iran regards the survival of the Assad regime as an extension of its war with the United States. Iran’s continued interference in Syria comes at a time that it is seeking to reduce Western sanctions, while maintaining its nuclear weapons program in violation of Security Council resolutions.

[Photo: U.S. Department of State / WikiCommons ]