BEIRUT — Syrians across the country voted Sunday in a referendum on a proposed new constitution, according to state media, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called upon them to abandon President Bashar Assad.
Clinton called the poll “a cynical ploy” and urged Syrians who still support Assad to turn against him. A “farce” and a “sham vote” was how German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle described it.
“It’s a phony referendum and it is going to be used by Assad to justify what he’s doing to other Syrian citizens,” Clinton said in an interview with CBS News in Rabat, Morocco.
INTERACTiVE
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“The longer you support the regime’s campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor,” Clinton said. “If you refuse, however, to prop up the regime or take part in attacks ... your countrymen and women will hail you as heroes.”
She said the U.S. and other nations are “appealing to members of the Syrian army to put the people of their country first before a family or a political party. And we are pushing hard for a plan that would lead to a political transition.”
Voting stations opened at 7 a.m. for a poll on a constitution that would allow - at least in theory - for the formation of competing political parties and would limit the president to two seven-year terms. Such change was unthinkable a year ago. Syria has been ruled by the Baath party since it seized power in a coup in 1963 and the Assad family has ruled since Bashar’s father Hafez took over in another coup in 1970.But critics contend the new constitution would do little to lessen Assad’s grip on the country and could legally allow him to remain in power until 2028.
While casting his vote at the state broadcasting headquarters, Assad showed no signs of giving in to international demands to end his crackdown. And as he has done in the past, he tried to deflect blame. He said Syria was under a “media attack.”
“They may be stronger on the airwaves but we are stronger on the ground, and we aspire to win both on the ground and on the airwaves,” he said in footage broadcast on state TV.
The Syrian Arab News Agency published photographs of people lining up to vote and reported that there were polling centers in every province. But one resident of the Khalidiy, a district in the embattled city of Homs - parts of which have been bombarded by heavy artillery by government forces for more than three weeks, said he had seen no polling centers there. His and other reports were impossible to verify, as Syria restricts access for reporters.
The referendum is the latest in a series of changes made by Assad’s government under pressure from a nearly year-long uprising demanding greater rights and freedoms for Syrians.
Opponents of Assad’s rule have dismissed the referendum as inconsequential, arguing that the proposed constitution gives the president broad power to decree laws, appoint the government and dissolve parliament and seems designed to maintain the status quo.
“It is a pathetically transparent attempt to steer away the attention of Syrians and the world from the [brutality] of Bashar al-Assad and his cohorts,” said Yaser Tabbara, a member of the prominent opposition Syrian National Council. He added that constitutional change meant little because the current constitution’s guarantees of rights were not honored by the government, whose military crackdown against protest has been widely condemned by Western and many Arab leaders.
Even a successful vote - results are expected today - is unlikely to bring immediate change. Activists say too many people have died for them to accept anything less than Assad’s ouster.
Legal expert Omran Zoubi, who helped draft the new document, said Assad’s timein office so far doesn’t count. That means he could serve two more terms after his current one ends 2014, keeping him in office until 2028.
ACTIVITY IN DAMASCUS
In the capital, Damascus, a regime stronghold where many in business and minority communities support Assad, many appeared eager to vote in what they considered a safe step toward political change.
“I’m here because I love my country,” said housewife Fayzeh Fadel, wearing large sunglasses, jeans and high heels. She said she didn’t want Syria to have a civil war like Libya or neighboring Iraq.
Most Damascus voters are likely regime supporters or people scared of unrest. Actual opponents probably stayed home.
The two main opposition groups, the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, called for a boycott, and other groups declared a general strike that appears to have been observed in some places.
Fewer voters turned out in the Damascus neighborhoods of Rukneddine and Barzeh, where anti-government protesters have recently demonstrated.
Videos posted online Sunday by activists - their primary means of communicating with the outside world - gave a very different view.
Some showed protests against the vote outside of Damascus and Aleppo. One video from the northern Idlib province showed hundreds of men chanting, “To hell with them and their constitution.”
The videos could not be independently verified.
VIOLENCE IN HOMS
Even as the regime hailed the referendum as a giant step toward change, its military kept up a crackdown that has been focused for the past three weeks on the opposition stronghold city of Homs. The city, parts of which are controlled by rebels, has come under intense shelling and hundreds have died, including two Western journalists.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 18 civilians and 16 security personnel were killed Sunday, mostly in Homs. Another group, the Local Coordination Committees, said 45 people were killed nationwide, including 21 in Homs province.
Activist groups estimate nearly 7,500 have died in 11 months of unrest. Supporters of the uprising say nothing short of Assad’s ouster will end the bloodshed.
Videos posted online showed the continued violence, as security forces shelled dissident areas and clashed with armed rebels.
The central city of Homs saw some of the day’s worst violence. One video showed men firing a rocket-propelled grenade at a tank. Another from the neighborhood of Baba Amr, which has been subject to a weeks-long government siege, showed huge plumes of smoke clouding the horizon while exploding shells boomed.
HAMAS
The Hamas leadership has left its longtime base in Syria because of the regime’s crackdown on opponents there, the No. 2 in the Islamic militant movement said in an interview Sunday at his new home on the outskirts of Cairo.
Moussa Abu Marzouk also told The Associated Press that a unity deal between Hamas and its political rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, faces steep obstacles despite optimistic assessments made by both sides in public.
A unity deal reached earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, was meant to end more than four years of separate Palestinian governments - one run by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the other by the Western-backed Abbas in the West Bank. As part of the deal, Abbas was to lead an interim unity government ahead of general elections.
However, a series of meetings in Cairo this week among Palestinian politicians, including Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, did not bring the sides closer to setting up such a government, participants said.
REFUGEES TO JORDAN
More than 80,000 Syrian refugees have fled the nearly 11 months of violence in their homeland and settled in neighboring Jordan, a Jordanian government official said Sunday.
The skyrocketing number of refugees, significantly higher than previously reported by the Jordanian government, attests to the growing violence in Syria where Assad is trying to suppress a months-long rebellion by Syrians demanding he step down.
Jordanian Information Minister Rakan al-Majali said Sunday that 73,000 refugees have entered the country from Syria across Jordan’s northern border. The figure comprises only those refugees who have crossed legally.
Last week, the interior ministry said at least 10,000 Syrians, including officers in the security forces, had entered Jordan illegally since the uprising began, bringing the total number of refugees in the country to roughly 83,000.
The refugees fleeing the crackdown by Assad receive considerable help in Jordan. Many are housed in apartments and some are hosted by Jordanian families and receive assistance from the government, private groups and the U.N.’s refugee agency.
Information for this article was contributed by Alice Fordham of The Washington Post; and by Zeina Karam, Ben Hubbard, Mohammed Daraghmeh, Dale Gavlak, Matthew Lee and Geir Moulson of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/27/2012