Syria has the first elections from Assad, but not in all the provinces

Syria will hold its first legislative elections on Sunday since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, in the midst of concerns about inclusiveness and successive delays.

There will be no direct vote for the People’s Assembly, which will be responsible for the legislation during a transition period.

Instead, the “electoral colleges” will select representatives for two thirds of the 210 seats. The acting president Ahmed al-Sharaa will name the rest.

The former longtime president Assad was ousted by Sharaa forces 10 months ago after a 13 -year civil war.

The authorities say they have postponed the polls for security reasons in two provinces controlled by the Kurds and a third who have seen fatal fights between government forces and Druze militias.

The clashes, in July, marked the last epidemic of sectarian violence in Syria since the reversal of Assad.

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week – the first of a Syrian president in 60 years – Sharaa has promised to court all those responsible for bloodshed, as well as those who have committed atrocities under Assad.

He also promised that Syria “is rebuilt by establishing a new state, by building institutions and laws which guarantee the rights of all without exception”.

Sunday surveys are supervised by the upper committee for elections to the Syrian People’s Assembly, of which 11 members were chosen by the president in June.

The number of seats allocated in each of the 60 districts is based on census data collected in 2010 – the year preceding the death of a civil war which killed more than 600,000 people and moved additional 12 million.

The postponement of the elections in the three provinces – Raqqa, Hassakeh and Suwaida – means that electoral colleges in only 50 of the 60 districts will choose representatives for around 120 seats on Sunday.

There will be more than 1,500 candidates, who must also be members of the electoral college. Supporters of “former regime or terrorist organizations” were prohibited from members, as are the defenders of “secession, division or research of foreign intervention”.

At least 20% of the members of the electoral college had to be women. But there were no minimum quotas for women legislators, or for those of the many ethnic and religious minorities in the country.

The president will choose representatives for 70 seats from outside electoral colleges.

Last month, 14 groups of the Syrian Civil Society said they were concerned about the fact that he would have a direct influence on the composition of the Parliament.

“This configuration makes parliament sensitive to the sales of power without reflecting the will of voters and undermines its representative nature targeted, allowing the executive authority to dominate an institution which should be independent and reflecting the popular will,” warned a joint declaration.

They also declared that the direct and indirect influence of the president on the higher committee and the electoral colleges made the elections “at best symbolic, devoid of their democratic objective of ensuring representation and responsibility”.

Sharaa defended the way the elections take place. “As a transition period, there is difficulty organizing popular elections due to the loss of documents, and half of the population is outside Syria, also without documents,” he said in a television interview, referring to the millions of refugees that have not returned.

The Higher Committee said it was not possible to hold elections in Raqqa, Hassakeh and Uwaida due to “security and political situation”. The 20 seats attributed to them will remain vacant until the polls can take place.

Raqqa and Hassakeh are mainly controlled by an alliance of the militia led by the Kurds, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is in the interim government of the implementation of a March agreement to integrate all the military and civil institutions in the State.

Thouraya Mustafa of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (Pyd) said that the electoral process and the delay showed that the government had the same mentality “as the previous authoritarian mentality”.

“We see the exclusion and denial of the rights of the Syrian people, as the elections. Consequently, the Syrian interim government does not represent the will of the Syrian people,” she told the news agency in Reuters.

The government also has little swaying in Uwaida, where tensions with the predominance population of the Druze have remained high since sectarian violence three months ago.

Violence broke out when Druze militias clashed with Sunni Bedouin tribes, which prompted the government to send its forces to intervene. According to surveillance groups.

Hussam Nasreddin, a resident of the predominantly suburbs of the southern Damascus of Damascus of Jaramana, rejected the electoral process as “more like an appointment”.

“The assembly of the people should be elected by the people and it should represent the people,” he told Reuters. “Today, we know nothing. We have not seen any list or representative. We have not seen anything.”