BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s first multicandidate presidential elections in decades is being touted by President Bashar Assad’s government as measuring Syrians’ support for him after three years of civil war that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and destroyed parts of the country.

Assad, whose family has led Syria for more than 40 years and whose dictatorial ways sparked the Arab Spring-inspired uprising against him in March 2011, is all but certain to win a third, seven-year term despite two other nominal candidates.