DUBAI – CANDIDATES president often need no introduction: a run for the top job is the capstone on a long, striving career in the public eye. Not so for Faten Ali Nahar, who seems to have found ambition late in life. On April 20th the speaker of Syria’s parliament announced that Ms Nahar had registered to stand in this month’s presidential election. Hardly anyone in Syria had heard of her. Searches on social media yielded little. A widely circulated photo of a woman said to be her also appears on a Facebook post about a Russian pharmacist who committed suicide in 2017.
If Ms Nahar’s bio and agenda were a mystery, they were also irrelevant. The incumbent, Bashar al-Assad, has spent a decade destroying his country to stay in power. He has no intention of losing.
For much of the past half-century, Arab authoritarians preferred to hold yes-or-no referendums on their rule. Lopsided margins meant the people adored them, they claimed. In 1995 Saddam Hussein attracted a mere 3,052 “no” votes out of 8.4m cast. The next time, in 2002, he did better, with 100% support and a record-setting 100% turnout. His campaign song, a rip-off of Dolly Parton’s “I will always love you”, expressed the obligatory attitude.
Since the mid-2000s, though, some autocrats have begun to let other candidates run. Free elections, these are not. There are restrictions before the vote, irregularities on election day and often ruthless crackdowns afterwards. But rulers hope the veneer of democracy will fend off discontent at home and criticism from abroad. However, even fake elections pose a conundrum: how do you choose the candidate who will lose?
The first rule is to avoid genuine challengers. Under pressure from America, Hosni Mubarak allowed opponents to run in 2005. One was Ayman Nour, a reform-minded member of parliament who formed Egypt’s first licensed opposition party. Widespread fraud ensured that Mr Nour won less than 8% of the vote, and he was soon sent to prison (for election fraud, ironically). But he remained a political nuisance until the revolution of 2011.
Egypt’s current president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, takes no such chances. When he ran for a second term in 2018, most opponents were arrested or intimidated before the vote. The only man permitted to run was a nobody who had previously endorsed Mr Sisi.
It helps to find an opponent even more unloved than you are. In 2014 Algerians had to choose between Abdelaziz Bouteflika, an ailing, unpopular incumbent, and Ali Benflis, an ex-prime minister widely blamed for a massacre of protesters. Mr Bouteflika romped to victory from his sickbed.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a Tunisian dictator, allowed a few opponents who shared his politics. One admitted before his race in 2009 that he could not compete against the president’s “extraordinary” achievements. Candidates must not resemble the incumbent too closely, though. To avoid any embarrassing mix-ups, authorities in Yemen disqualified a man in 1999 because his name was similar to the president’s.
As for Ms Nahar, she seems to have enjoyed her turn in the spotlight. She introduced herself in an interview with a Russian news channel. A Facebook page purporting to be her campaign website outlined a plan to launch a Syrian space mission by 2025, never mind that Syrian motorists these days are struggling to find petrol for their cars.
Alas, her ambitions were soon grounded. On May 3rd Syria’s high court approved just two candidates from the list of 50 who had applied to run against Mr Assad. Her name was not on the list. Perhaps she should count herself lucky. Hours after the court made its decision, the regime leaked nude photos of one of the approved challengers.
By The Economist
