Syria is holding parliamentary elections for the first time since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, a landmark moment in the country’s fragile transition after nearly 14 years of war.
Members of Syria’s electoral colleges gathered on Sunday to vote for the new lawmakers in a process being criticised as undemocratic, with a third of the 210 members of the revamped People’s Assembly appointed by interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The remaining representatives will not be voted on directly by the people, but chosen instead by electoral colleges around the country.
Critics say the system favours well-connected figures and is likely to keep power concentrated in the hands of Syria’s new rulers, rather than paving the way for genuine democratic change.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa will directly appoint one-third of the deputies [File: Stephanie Lecocq/AFP]
In a joint statement last month, more than a dozen nongovernmental organisations said the process means al-Sharaa “can effectively shape a parliamentary majority composed of individuals he selected or ensured loyalty from”, which risked “undermining the principle of pluralism essential to any genuine democratic process”.
“You can call the process what you like, but not elections,” Bassam Alahmad, executive director of France-based Syrians for Truth and Justice, one of the organisations to have signed the statement, told the AFP news agency.
Meanwhile, elections in the restive Druze-majority province of Suwayda and in northeastern areas controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been indefinitely postponed due to tensions between local authorities and the central government in Damascus.
No campaigns, no parties
Reporting from Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid said whatever the democratic shortcomings of Sunday’s elections, they were an important step for Syrians towards gaining representation in a body that could begin tackling the country’s significant challenges.
“There are no political campaigns, there are no political parties,” he said. “But people on the street feel that this is the first chance that they’re getting of a real taste of an election after nearly six decades of the Assad family’s rule.”
During the al-Assad dynasty’s years in power, regular elections were held, but they were widely viewed as sham, and the al-Assad-led Baath party always dominated the parliament.
During its 30-month term, the incoming parliament will be tasked with preparing the ground for a popular vote in the next elections.
Bin Javaid said the parliament would have to prove “that Syria can become a constitutional democracy and the people who come to power will be answerable to those who vote for them”.
How will it work?
The People’s Assembly has 210 seats, of which 140 are voted on by electoral colleges throughout the country, with the number of seats for each district distributed by population. The remaining 70 deputies will be appointed directly by al-Sharaa.
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 – will vote for the 140 seats.
However, the postponement of elections in the Kurdish-dominated northeast and Druze-majority southern province of Suwayda, which remain outside Damascus’s control, means that seats there will remain empty.
All the candidates come from the ranks of the electoral colleges and are running as independents, as existing political parties were dissolved by Syria’s new authorities following al-Assad’s ouster, and no replacement system has been established to register new parties.
Obstacles to popular vote
While the lack of a popular vote has been criticised as undemocratic, some analysts say the government’s reasons are valid.
Al-Sharaa has said it would be impossible to organise direct elections now due to the large number of Syrians who lack documentation after millions fled abroad or were displaced internally.
“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, told The Associated Press news agency.
“It would be really difficult to draw electoral lists today in Syria.”
Haid Haid, a senior research fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative and the Chatham House think tank, told AP that he was more concerned by the lack of transparency under which electors were chosen.
“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.
Critics have also expressed concerns about the representation of minorities and women in the new assembly, with only 14 percent of the candidates being women, and Suwayda and the northeast excluded from the process.
Nishan Ismail, 40, a teacher in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, told AFP that “elections could have been a new political start” after the fall of the al-Assad regime, but “the marginalisation of numerous regions shows that the standards of political participation are not respected”.
At a meeting in Damascus this week, candidate Mayssa Halwani said the criticism of the system was to be expected. “The government is new to power and freedom is new for us,” she said.
