On April 21, 2021, Syrian President Bashar Al ASSAD presented the documents to run for a third term in an election scheduled for May 26. This information was presented on the state media by the parliament’s speaker.

The Syrian Parliament announced the elections on Sunday.

ASSAD’s family and the Baath Party has power in Syria for 50 years with the help of the security forces and the army, where his Alawite minority dominates.

Bashar took power following the death of his father Hafez in 2000 and won the previous elections in 2014 with nearly 90 % of the votes.

The military intervention of the Russian Federation helped the President ASSAD to regain large swathes of land from opposition fighters, who now control a small pocket of land in the country’s northwestern region.

The Syrian Constitution says that a president may only have two seven-year terms. The only exception is for the president elected in the 2014 poll.

Candidates must have lived continuously in Syria for at least 10 years. This means that that opposition figures in exile who were fighting to end ASSAD family rule are barred from standing.

The poll also comes amid the coronavirus pandemic and an economic crisis.

The Syrian pound has plummeted on the black market, accelerated by the financial crisis in Lebanon as well as US sanctions.

This article was edited using the data from Aljazeera.com, Reuters.com, Arabnews.com, Usnews.com, and English.aawsat.com.