Some countries call on their populations to take part in the elections in order to learn their opinion and abide by it in selecting the rulers and making the necessary political decisions to run their affairs. And some other countries call on their populations to take part in elections in order to laugh at them and to stress on how their opinions are disregarded and despised. In the former countries, the voters’ opinion is the basis for the ruler’s decisions. And in the latter countries, the voter’s opinion represents nothing more than a fingerprint used by the ruler to obtain a blind approval on his decisions. And if the people’s decisions happen to contradict the ruler’s, then the easiest solution would consist of “terminating” the voter, which is the quickest way to change his vote.

We are currently seeing a number of electoral experiences that we can compare to each other. No one of course wants to compare the French or the Greek democracy to the Syrian “democracy.” However, it is exciting to see how the ruler who loses through the voting ballots exits power when the opinion of the voters represents the last referee and how the ruler sitting on more than 10,000 dead bodies can maintain his authority “thanks to” voting ballots. This is only indicative of how much this ruler disregards his own people to the extent of daring to invite them to elect their representatives with the aim of consolidating his stay in power, while masses are taking to the street every week and calling for his departure.

In such a country, it is only natural that the media institutions affiliated to the ruler would voice out their opinion regarding the outcomes of the French elections by saying that these elections resulted in President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Foreign Minister Alain Juppé going to “history’s dump site.” This is how this regime views the loss of the candidates under the pressure of the popular will. And in order to avoid going to “history’s dump site” this regime opted for the easiest solution, that of calling for mock elections while the country’s cities and towns are empty and paralyzed, and chasing after those who are calling for toppling the regime and accusing them of being external agents and a bunch of terrorists, thus making it legal to kill them.

The voting ballots are not the only tools that the regime’s apparatuses are using to justify their subsistence. All the state’s apparatuses, including the security, judiciary and central bank apparatuses as well as the state’s funds and general budget, are at the service of the regime. In such regimes, it is hard to distinguish the state’s institutions (if any) from the ruler’s institutions. The former institutions only exist to serve the interests of the ruler and his stay in power, no more and no less.

It is hard to speak about the ongoing democratic processes without mentioning the Russian elections that brought Vladimir Putin back to the Kremlin. Much was said about the falsification operations that came along these elections whereby the opposition was subjected to harassment and persecutions. Indeed, the “democratic” Putin described the oppositionists as being “apes and western agents” only because they dared to run and vote against him and to call on him to step down in favor of another figure since he has been in power for the past eight years (2000-2008); along with his ally, Medvedev who has been in power for the past four years where Putin was the prime minister and the actual ruler of Russia. Can we then be surprised by this exceptional rush that the Moscow rulers are exerting against the desire of the Syrians and in support of the Damascus ruler? Can the Russian president be asked to be keener on respecting the Syrian votes than his respect for his own countrymen?