Campaigning began Sunday for Syria's June 3 presidential election expected to return Bashar al-Assad to power, as the regime marked a symbolic victory with the exit of rebels from Homs. In Damascus, campaign posters lauding Assad hung on shopping streets and in public gardens, in the run-up to the country's first multi-candidate presidential vote. Assad, who is competing for his third seven-year term, came to ****** in 2000, after the death of his father and predecessor Hafez al-Assad, who had been in power since 1970. Maher Abdel Hafiz Hajjar is an independent MP and former communist party member from the country's second city Aleppo, and Hassan Abdullah al-Nuri is a Damascus businessman who was a member of the internal opposition tolerated by Assad's government.