BEIRUT: Syria is set to hold parliamentary elections on Sunday for the first time since the fall of the country’s longtime autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, who was unseated in a rebel offensive in December.
Under the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty, Syria held regular elections in which all Syrian citizens could vote. But in practice, the Assad-led Baath Party always dominated the parliament, and the votes were widely regarded as sham elections.
Outside election analysts said the only truly competitive part of the process came before election day – with the internal primary system in the Baath Party, when party members jockeyed for positions on the list.
The elections to be held on Sunday, however, will not be a fully democratic process either. Rather, most of the People’s Assembly seats will be voted on by electoral colleges in each district, while one third of the seats will be directly appointed by interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa.
Despite not being a popular vote, the election results will likely be taken as a barometer of how serious the interim authorities are about inclusivity, particularly of women and minorities.
Here’s a breakdown of how the elections will work and what to watch.
How the system works
The People’s Assembly has 210 seats, of which two-thirds will be elected on Sunday and one-third appointed. The elected seats are voted upon by electoral colleges in districts throughout the country, with the number of seats for each district distributed by population.
In theory, a total of 7,000 electoral college members in 60 districts – chosen from a pool of applicants in each district by committees appointed for the purpose – should vote for 140 seats.
However, the elections in Sweida province and in areas of the northeast controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been indefinitely postponed due to tensions between the local authorities in those areas and the central government in Damascus, meaning that those seats will remain empty.
In practice, therefore, around 6,000 electoral college members will vote in 50 districts for about 120 seats.
The largest district is the one containing the city of Aleppo, where 700 electoral college members will vote to fill 14 seats, followed by the city of Damascus, with 500 members voting for 10 seats.
All candidates come from the membership of the electoral colleges.
Following Assad’s ouster, the interim authorities dissolved all existing political parties, most of which were closely affiliated with the Assad government, and have not yet set up a system for new parties to register, so all candidates are running as individuals.
Why no popular vote
The interim authorities have said that it would be impossible to create an accurate voter registry and conduct a popular vote at this stage, given that millions of Syrians were internally or externally displaced by the country’s nearly 14-year civil war and many have lost personal documents.
This parliament will have a 30-month term, during which the government is supposed to prepare the ground for a popular vote in the next elections.
The lack of a popular vote has drawn criticism of being undemocratic, but some analysts say the government’s reasons are legitimate.
“We don’t even know how many Syrians are in Syria today,” because of the large number of displaced people, said Benjamin Feve, a senior research analyst at the Syria-focused Karam Shaar Advisory consulting firm.
“It would be really difficult to draw electoral lists today in Syria,” or to arrange the logistics for Syrians in the diaspora to vote in their countries of residence, he said.
Haid Haid, a senior research fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative and the Chatham House think tank said that the more concerning issue was the lack of clear criteria under which electors were selected.
“Especially when it comes to choosing the subcommittees and the electoral colleges, there is no oversight, and the whole process is sort of potentially vulnerable to manipulation,” he said.
There have been widespread objections after electoral authorities “removed names from the initial lists that were published, and they did not provide detailed information as to why those names were removed,” he said.
Questions about inclusivity
There is no set quota for representation of women and religious or ethnic minorities in the parliament.
Women were required to make up 20 percent of electoral college members, but that did not guarantee that they would make up a comparable percentage of candidates or of those elected.
State-run news agency SANA, citing the head of the national elections committee, Mohammed Taha Al-Ahmad, reported that women made up 14 percent of the 1,578 candidates who made it to the final lists. In some districts, women make up 30 or 40 percent of all candidates, while in others, there are no female candidates.
Meanwhile, the exclusion of the Druze-majority Sweida province and Kurdish-controlled areas in the northeast as well as the lack of set quotas for minorities has raised questions about representation of communities that are not part of the Sunni Arab national majority.
The issue is particularly sensitive after outbreaks of sectarian violence in recent months in which hundreds of civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities were killed, many of them by government-affiliated fighters.
Feve noted that electoral districts had been drawn in such a way as to create minority-majority districts.
“What the government could have done if it wanted to limit the number of minorities, it could have merged these districts or these localities with majority Sunni Muslim districts,” he said. “They could have basically drowned the minorities which is what they didn’t do.”
Officials have also pointed to the one-third of parliament directly appointed by Al-Sharaa as a mechanism to “ensure improvement in the inclusivity of the legislative body,” Haid said. The idea is that if few women or minorities are elected by the electoral colleges, the president would include a higher percentage in his picks.
The lack of representation of Sweida and the northeast remains problematic, Haid said – even if Al-Sharaa appoints legislators from those areas.
“The bottom line is that regardless of how many people will be appointed from those areas, the dispute between the de facto authorities and Damascus over their participation in the political process will remain a major issue,” he said.
How Syria’s first elections since autocrat Assad’s ouster is expected to unfold
https://arab.news/yrwzw
How Syria’s first elections since autocrat Assad’s ouster is expected to unfold
- Under the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty, Syria held regular elections in which all Syrian citizens could vote
- But in practice, the Assad-led Baath Party always dominated the parliament, and the votes were widely regarded as sham elections
US military launches strikes in Syria against Daesh fighters after American deaths
- “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says
- President Trump earlier pledged “very serious retaliation” but stressed that Syria was fighting alongside US troops
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration launched military strikes Friday in Syria to “eliminate” Daesh group fighters and weapons sites in retaliation for an ambush attack that killed two US troops and an American interpreter almost a week ago.
A US official described it as “a large-scale” strike that hit 70 targets in areas across central Syria that had Daesh (also known as Islamic State or IS) infrastructure and weapons. Another US official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations, said more strikes should be expected.
The attack was conducted using F-15 Eagle jets, A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft and AH-64 Apache helicopters, the officials said. F-16 fighter jets from Jordan and HIMARS rocket artillery also were used, one official said.
“This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance. The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on social media.
President Donald Trump had pledged “very serious retaliation” after the shooting in the Syrian desert, for which he blamed Daesh. The troops were among hundreds of US troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting the terrorist group.
Trump in a social media post said the strikes were targeting Daesh “strongholds.” He reiterated his support for Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who he said was “fully in support” of the US effort to target the militant group.
Trump also offered an all-caps threat, warning the group against attacking US personnel again.
“All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned — YOU WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE IF YOU, IN ANY WAY, ATTACK OR THREATEN THE USA.,” the president added.
The attack was a major test for the warming ties between the United States and Syria since the ouster of autocratic leader Bashar Assad a year ago. Trump has stressed that Syria was fighting alongside US troops and said Al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack,” which came as the US military is expanding its cooperation with Syrian security forces.
Syria’s foreign ministry in a statement on X following the launch of US strikes said that last week’s attack “underscores the urgent necessity of strengthening international cooperation to combat terrorism in all its forms” and that Syria is committed “to fighting Daesh and ensuring that it has no safe havens on Syrian territory and will continue to intensify military operations against it wherever it poses a threat.”
Daesh has not claimed responsibility for the attack on the US service members, but the group has claimed responsibility for two attacks on Syrian security forces since, one of which killed four Syrian soldiers in Idlib province. The group in its statements described Al-Sharaa’s government and army as “apostates.” While Al-Sharaa once led a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, he has had a long-running enmity with Daesh.
Syrian state television reported that the US strikes hit targets in rural areas of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa provinces and in the Jabal Al-Amour area near Palmyra. It said they targeted “weapons storage sites and headquarters used by Daesh as launching points for its operations in the region.”
Trump this week met privately with the families of the slain Americans at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware before he joined top military officials and other dignitaries on the tarmac for the dignified transfer, a solemn and largely silent ritual honoring US service members killed in action.
The guardsmen killed in Syria last Saturday were Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, according to the US Army. Ayad Mansoor Sakat, of Macomb, Michigan, a US civilian working as an interpreter, was also killed.
The shooting nearly a week ago near the historic city of Palmyra also wounded three other US troops as well as members of Syria’s security forces, and the gunman was killed. The assailant had joined Syria’s internal security forces as a base security guard two months ago and recently was reassigned because of suspicions that he might be affiliated with Daesh, Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour Al-Din Al-Baba has said.
The man stormed a meeting between US and Syrian security officials who were having lunch together and opened fire after clashing with Syrian guards.
When asked for further information, the Pentagon referred AP to Hegseth’s social media post.
