BEIRUT/DAMASCUS: Syria’s government said voters turned out in large numbers Monday for a parliamentary election it sees as central to its reform program.
 
However, opposition supporters denounced the exercise as a sham and reported more fighting between rebels and troops loyal to President Bashar Assad. In Washington, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the unrelenting bloodshed “totally unacceptable and intolerable.”
 
Ban said it was a priority for the United Nations to deploy a mission to supervise a cease-fire as soon as possible and he called on all factions to stop the violence.
 
The head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria, Gen. Robert Mood met Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem Monday.
 
Moallem stressed the need for the mission “to be objective and professional to relay the reality of the situation in Syria to the international community away from the politicizing taking place at the Security Council,” SANA, Syria’s official news agency reported.
 
Mood praised Syria’s cooperation in facilitating the mission’s work and guaranteeing its freedom of movement, SANA said.
 
Meanwhile, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that for the government to go ahead with balloting in the current atmosphere in Syria “borders on ludicrous.”
 
“It is not really possible to hold credible elections in a climate where basic human rights are being denied to the citizens and the government is continuing to carry out daily assaults on its own citizens,” he said.
 
The chairman of Syria’s Higher Committee for Elections, Khalaf al-Azzawi, said on state television that voting was proceeding “normally and quietly” across the country, which has been gripped for 14 months by the uprising against Assad’s rule.
 
State news agency SANA reported a big turnout. Witnesses in Damascus said voting appeared to be patchy.
 
In one polling station, authorities said 137 people voted in the first three hours while foreign journalists saw only three ballots cast there over 40 minutes.
 
“All of this is a theater show. The candidates are businessmen and pawns of strong people in power,” one man, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters near a polling station in the capital.
 
A shopkeeper across the road from the booth, said at first that the weather was too hot to vote. When pressed, he added: “I just want to say: With all this blood, what do you think will fix it? Elections? No.”
 
Some of those who did vote said they saw it as a chance to end the crisis, in which 9,000 people have been killed by Assad’s forces, according to the U.N. The government says 2,600 security personnel have been killed by opposition forces.
 
Reem al-Homsi, a recent university graduate, said she voted because she wants what is best for her country.
 
“I want a normal life and I want a job,” she said.
 
State television aired footage from polling centers across the country, showing people ticking boxes on ballot papers. But despite heavy media coverage in recent days, there has been little discussion of candidate policies or political leanings.
 
A 24-year-old man working for one candidate said that after four years of unemployment, he was just doing a job.
 
“I am here representing this businessman so I can take 3,000 lira ($50) home at the end of the day and go,” he said. “I hope this parliament will be able to provide me a job. Although, honestly, I am not confident.”
 
The British-based pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy clashes between rebels and soldiers in the northern provinces, rebellious Hama city, and around the capital Monday.
 
In the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, three dissidents were killed in a dawn raid by government troops and three others were killed by snipers on rooftops, the Observatory said.
 
The violence underlined the challenge of holding a credible poll and further complicates the task of U.N. observers monitoring a shaky cease-fire, declared on April 12.
 
Opposition figures boycotted the vote, and said Syria’s revised constitution, which allowed new political parties to be set up, has changed nothing.
 
Activist Musaab al-Hamadi said people were striking in Hama – a city with a bloody history of opposition to the Assad family – and that activists were burning tires in the streets.
 
In Qalaat al-Madeeq, a village in Hama province, a video which activists say was filmed Monday showed the streets completely deserted and shops shuttered.
 
“Today is the Syrian parliamentary poll and we say to you Bashar Assad that there are no people in Qalaat al-Madeeq voting. You’ve displaced people and killed women and children. We are on strike,” a man filming in Hama said off-camera.
 
Louay Hussein, a centrist activist who heads the Movement for Building a State, said the elections were “window-dressing” and would not shift the balance of power in Syria.