Syria elections 2014: Bashar al-Assad wins third term

President Bashar al-Assad has won a third term in office after securing 88.7% of votes in Syria’s presidential election, the parliamentary speaker has announced.

Earlier, Syria’s constitutional court put the vote turnout at 73.47%.

Voting took place in government-controlled areas, but not in parts of the north and east held by rebels.

Tens of thousands of people have died in three years of civil war in Syria, with millions more displaced.

Bashar al-Assad’s key challengers, Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, received 4.3% and 3.2% of the vote respectively.

It was the first time in decades that more than one person – outside of the Assad family – had been allowed to stand as presidential candidate.

Bashar al-Assad’s critics and the Syrian opposition in rebel-held areas have dismissed the election as a farce, arguing that it has no credibility in the midst of a civil war.

The opposition’s allies in the West also denounced the ballot, with US Secretary of State John Kerry, on a visit to neighboring Lebanon, describing it as “meaningless”.

The results of the election were announced by parliamentary speaker Mohammad al-Laham on Wednesday.

“I declare the victory of Dr. Bashar Hafez al-Assad as president of the Syrian Arab Republic with an absolute majority of the votes cast in the election,” he announced in a televised address.

Celebratory gunfire erupted in the Syrian capital Damascus after the results, with reports of at least three people killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria’s constitutional court had earlier announced that some 11.63 million Syrians voted out of a total of 15.85 million eligible to cast a ballot.

The win is likely to boost Bashar al-Assad’s supporters. The government side has recently made significant military gains and rebel groups are fighting among themselves.

But the vote has faced sharp criticism from the US and its allies.

“You can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote,” Secretary of State John Kerry said.

The EU joined the US in condemning the election, saying in a statement that it could not be considered “a genuinely democratic vote”.

Also on Wednesday, a delegation of officials visiting Damascus from more than 30 countries, including Iran, Russia and Venezuela, issued a statement in support of the “transparent and free” elections, the Associated Press reports.