DAMASCUS - Syria said on Tuesday over half of eligible voters turned out for a parliamentary election central to reforms that it says show President Bashar Assad's aim to peacefully resolve an uprising against him, but which opponents dismissed as a farce.The head of the body that oversaw last week's vote told reporters that 51.26 percent of the electorate, or just over 5 million, took part in an election rejected in advance by opposition leaders as a ruse to buy time to crush dissent."The election gave the people the broadest possible representation," Khalaf al-Azzawi told reporters at a televised news conference in Damascus."The election took place with full transparency, democracy, integrity, supervised and monitored by independent judicial councils which were not pressured by any side," he said.
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)