Damascus: The incumbent President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, has won a third seven-year term in office in the presidential elections that took place on Tuesday.
A speaker of the Syrian parliament on Wednesday said that 1,319,723 people voted for Assad, which made about 88.7 percent of the votes.
The general election started at 7 a.m. Tuesday and was scheduled to end at 7 p.m. But the Supreme Judicial Committee, which was tasked with overseeing the electoral process, later announced to extend the voting for another five hours until midnight citing a "huge turnout".
It is the first multi-candidate presidential election in Syria's modern history, which has been dismissed by the exiled opposition as a "farce".
