President Assad’s message of thanks came Friday through his social networking Facebook site in which he further emphasized that the high turnout of Syrian expatriates abroad is reflective of their great national awareness.

The Syrian president also stated that the strong showing of Syria natives residing in foreign lands indicated their real belonging to the homeland as well as their aspiration to build the future of modern Syria.

Syrian expatriates and refugees voted in Syria’s presidential election on May 28-29.

Due to the higher-than-expected turnout of Syrian voters abroad voting time was extended by several hours in some of its embassies overseas and by an additional day in neighboring Lebanon, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees took part in the voting.

The presidential election in Syria will be held on June 3 despite a surge of terror attacks, mostly against civilian targets, by armed insurgents as well as opposition publicity campaigns to undermine the landmark election process.

There are three candidates in Syria’s presidential election, namely incumbent President Bashar al-Assad and Maher Abdel Hafiz Hajjar and Hassan Abdallah al-Nuri.

According the Syria’s Interior Ministry officials, nearly 16 million Syrians are eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential poll.

Damascus has insisted that it would hold the presidential poll despite the foreign-backed insurgency war, which has, according to some sources, killed over 150,000 people and displaced millions of others since it erupted in Syria in March 2011.

MB/MB