BY rejecting Kofi Annan’s “concrete proposals”, President Bashar al-Assad has slammed the door on a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis. As a representative of the Arab League and the United Nations, the former secretary-general had proposed negotiations as a solution. But the president said he would not talk to “terrorists”. There are reasons why Mr Assad thinks he will be able to ride out the storm. The bastion of his power is the army, and by and large it is loyal to him. There have been individual defections in large numbers, but there have been no wholesale defections by units. In fact, the defeat inflicted on the rebels in Homs and more recently in Idlib would not have been possible if the army high command and the rank and file had not acted with the ruthlessness that was required. A Libya-like foreign intervention is out of the question for a country that is Israel’s neighbour, and Jordan and Turkey have refused to enforce no-fly zones in given areas.

The president now wants to hold a general election on May 7, and for the first time it will be a multi-party affair. The election will be held on the basis of a modified constitution the government said was approved in February in a referendum. However, the opposition calls it a hoax and has pledged continued resistance. The result is unabated slaughter and widespread human misery. The number of refugees, including the internally displaced, has crossed 50,000, while the overall death toll has risen to over 9,000. In this anarchy it will be extremely difficult for the Baathist regime to hold an election that would be accepted by the international community as transparent and reflective of the Syrian people’s preferences. The only choice the president has is to invite Arab and other international observers to monitor the electoral process and call off the crackdown. Without an end to the fighting, it is difficult to see how those willing to cast their votes will go to the polling stations in numbers large enough to make the election results appear credible.