Can an election amidst a civil war truly be fair?

The Heat

Syrians hold pictures of re-elected Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

More than 150,000 people have died and nearly three million Syrians have fled their homeland. This week, President Bashar al-Assad asked his people for another seven years in office.

The opposition denounced the presidential election which included two largely unknown candidates and western governments including the United States are questioning its legitimacy. Nathan King reports.

The city of Homs, once known as the “Capitol of the Revolution”, is now back in the government’s control, but years of shelling and military siege have left its neighborhoods hardly recognizable to those who call it home. For the 2.8 million refugees living in Lebanon and Jordan, many are left to wonder if they’ll ever be able to return home. For an in depth look at the Syrian presidential election, former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman joined Anand Naidoo at CCTV America’s Washington, D.C. studio. Senator Coleman served the people of Minnesota from 2003 to 2009 and is now an attorney with Hogan Lovells.

Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the presidential election in Syria. During the “Friends of Syria” meeting last month in London, The United Kingdom, the United States, and Arab countries vowed to step up assistance to Syria’s moderate opposition. Daoud Khairallah, a law Professor with Georgetown University, and Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, senior political adviser for the Syrian American Council in Washington, D.C., joined Anand Naidoo for a panel discussion on the impact of the Syrian presidential election.