„This election is a mockery,“ said another widow, Fatma Fahal. „It shouldn’t happen. My husband and his three brothers didn’t martyr themselves for God and country just for people to go out and vote for Bashar.“
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27687018

It seems noone told Fatma Fahal that the election was indeed a good platform to display opposition and discontent by voting one of the other candidates and thus AGAINST Assad. This exactly is the dilemma of Syrias opposition: They reject and (try to) sabotage referendums, negotiations and elections but offer no alternative and hence play a major role in extending the suffering of the very people they claim to represent and to protect.

Another totally shameful and ridicuolous aspect of this BBC article is the attempt to portray the Salafist and Saudi funded/supported  „Islamic Front“ (IF) as a nationalist, „moderate islamist“ and purely Syrian movement. Whoever knows the composition of the IF with Ahrar al Sham and Jaish al Islam being its biggest factions is aware of the groups sectarian and radical character. Their attempt to distance themselves from the even more radical ISIS can only deceive naive readers who are not familiar with the IFs regular joint ventures with the beheaders and prisoner executers of the Jabhat al Nusra (JAN). It was during one of the joint endeavours of the IF and JAN in Adraa where loyalist civilians were thrown into ovens and slaughtered.

Also interesting:
„In Deir ez-Zor, another city in the east, JAN militants from the local Sharia court beat and detained women who were not wearing full Islamic dress and who had listened to music at a wedding party in a private house.“
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-fighting-a-civil-war-through-the-ballot-box-9449213.html

JAN is the single most important effective fighting force on the rebel side. They fight as a leading force on all relevant Syrian battlefronts. Hardly any rebel success is unrelated to JAN. For this reason the „good islamists“ of the IF, as the BBC and other pro-rebel anti-Assad sources try to whitewash them, cooperate with JAN. And when for a brief period the rebels of the so called „moderate“ and Jordan/CIA-trained „Southern Front“ achieved some successes in Deraa and Quneitra it were mostly the JAN fighters who were behind it.