Aquila89 wrote:When a party takes power in a coup and rewrites the constitution to ensure that the leader of the country can only come from their rank, that country is not a democracy in any way, shape, or form.
Did you consider Saddam Hussein democratically elected too? He held presidential referendums like Assad, one in 1995, where he won 99% of the vote with a 99% turnout, and one in 2002, where he got 100% of the vote with 100% turnout. And don't give me "the systems were different", or explain to me how Saddam's system was different from Assad's, because I don't see much of a difference.
I work in a case by case basis, Syria is not Iraq because it is Syria. The situations are different and I don't know much about Saddam Hussein's elections, all I know is that he was accused of having WMD's and was killed (speculating) when America felt his usefulness to their own agendas were over.
If he got that much of the vote however and with a turnout like that, and people could actually vote to reject him but chose not to and the results were not proven to be fabricated (eg, Lisa Simpsons cat didn't vote for him). Sure then that is a democratic election in my book.
I could complain about a lot of countries (Commonwealth included) for making the head of state a hereditary role, my own country has a head of state that doesn't even live here and for the time being will only be English and Anglican. A country that our own high-court has deemed a foreign power judging from the constitutional crisis regarding section 44. And before you say that it's different, of course it is. But having the leader elected then it doesn't really matter about the party behind it unless the leader is a puppet to that party. Who is in control I ask you? Assad or the Ba'ath party? Since your constitutional issues direct me to believe the issue lies with the Ba'ath party, and yet Assad is the one you are complaining about when he was the one the voters elected. He was the first candidate presented and instead of rejecting him and making the Ba'ath party present another candidate the people overwhelmingly voted in favor of him (probably same reason America had George Bush senior and junior), the same happened in the subsequent election cementing his presidency.
And I'm finding a lot of ignoring to the things I'm saying, I have made an effort to respond to most if not all statements made but on the other hand people seem to shift the subject backwards. And it is leading us to go around in circles. We were discussing the recent chemical attack in Syria and potential culprits and now I'm supposed to be answering questions about Saddam Hussein's elections in the mid 90's.
I already gave my opinion on the legitimacy of what I perceive as a democratic election which brought Assad into power (thousands of times), I already stated what it would take for me to change my mind (evidence of fabrication). Nothing else will sway me on the matter, and there is no point to be dragging it on. Because at the end of the day you're arguing about how democratic something is with a crazy guy who obviously has a more simplistic interpretation of what "democracy" has to consist of compared to your own views on democracy.
So we might as well get it back on track and actually discuss/speculate on what happened? And I'll have it on record that I'm not going to respond to any more talk about elections (I don't want to be wasting all my time on this thread and I have a really bad habit of writing long responses and lots of them, I remember I once went overboard in a thread regarding Cuba's involvement in Angola or something and I don't want to repeat it).