How the first elections of Syria since the ouster of Autocrat Assad could take place

Syria is expected to organize legislative elections on Sunday for the first time since the fall of the country’s long-standing leader in the country, Bashar al-Assad, who was dedicated to a rebellious offensive in December.

Under the 50 -year rule of the Assad dynasty, Syria has held regular elections to which all Syrian citizens could vote. But in practice, the Baath party led by Assad has always dominated Parliament, and the votes were largely considered as impossible elections.

External electoral analysts said that the only truly competitive part of the process had come before election day – with the internal primary system of the Baath party, when party members judged positions on the list.

However, the elections that will be held on Sunday will not be a fully democratic process either. On the contrary, most of the seats in the People’s Assembly will be voted by the electoral colleges of each district, while a third of the seats will be directly appointed by the acting president Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Although it is not a popular vote, the results of the elections will probably be considered as a barometer of the severity of the interim authorities concerning inclusiveness, in particular women and minorities.

Here is a ventilation of how the elections will work and what to look at.

How the system works

The People’s Assembly has 210 seats, two thirds of which will be elected on Sunday and a third party. The elected seats are elected by electoral colleges in the country’s districts, with the number of seats for each district distributed by the population.

In theory, a total of 7,000 members of the electoral college in 60 districts – chosen from a basin of candidates in each district by committees appointed for this purpose – should vote for 140 seats.

However, the elections of the province of Sweida and the northeast regions controlled by the Syrian democratic forces led by the Kurds were postponed indefinitely due to tensions between the local authorities of these regions and the central government of Damascus, which means that these seats will remain empty.

In practice, around 6,000 members of the electoral college will vote in 50 districts for around 120 seats.

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The largest district is that containing the city of Aleppo, where 700 members of the electoral college will vote to fill 14 seats, followed by the city of Damascus, with 500 members voted for 10 seats.

All candidates come from members of electoral colleges.

Following Assad’s eviction, the interim authorities have dissolved all existing political parties, most of which were closely affiliated with the government of Assad, and have not yet created a system for new parties to register, so that all candidates operate as individuals.

Why not a popular vote

Interim authorities have declared that it would be impossible to create a register of specific voters and to carry out a popular vote at this stage, given that millions of Syrians have been moved internally or outside by the country’s civil war of the country, 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 absence of a popular vote has aroused criticism of being undemocratic, but some analysts say that the government’s reasons are legitimate.

“We do not even know how many Syrians are in Syria today,” due to the large number of displaced people, said Benjamin FEVE, main research analyst of the Karam Shaar advisory consulting company focused on Syria.

“It would be really difficult to draw electoral lists today in Syria”, or to organize the logistics of the Syrians of the diaspora to vote in their country of residence, he said.

Haid Haid, principal researcher at the initiative of Arab reform and the Chatham House reflection group said that the most worrying question was the lack of clear criteria under which the voters were selected.

“Especially when it comes to choosing the sub-commies and electoral colleges, there is no surveillance and the whole process is somehow potentially vulnerable to manipulation,” he said.

There have been generalized objections after the electoral authorities “deleted the names of the initial lists published, and they did not provide detailed information on the reasons why these names have been deleted,” he said.

Questions about inclusiveness

There is no fixed quota for the representation of women and religious or ethnic minorities in parliament.

Women had to represent 20% of the members of the electoral college, but that did not guarantee that they would represent a comparable percentage of candidates or those elected.

The public news agency Sana, citing the head of the national election committee, Mohammed Taha al-Ahmad, reported that women represented 14% of the 1,578 candidates who reached the final lists. In some districts, women represent 30 or 40% of all candidates, while in others, there are no candidates.

Meanwhile, the exclusion of the province of Druze-Majority Sweida and areas controlled by the Kurds in the Northeast as well as the lack of fixed quotas for minorities have raised questions on the representation of communities which are not part of the Sunni national majority.

The question is particularly sensitive after epidemics of sectarian violence in the past few months in which hundreds of civilians from Alaounite and Druze minorities have been killed, many of whom were affiliated with government.

FEVE noted that the electoral districts had been drawn to create a minority majority districts.

“What the government could have done if he wanted to limit the number of minorities, he could have merged these districts or these localities with majority Sunni Muslim districts,” he said. “They could have drowned the minorities, which they did not do.”

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The officials also indicated a third of the Parliament directly appointed by Al-Sharaa as a mechanism to “ensure an improvement in the inclusiveness of the legislative body,” said Haid. The idea is that so few women or minorities are elected by electoral colleges, the president would include a higher percentage in his choices.

The lack of representation of Sweida and the Northeast remains problematic, said Haid-even if Al-Sharaa names the legislators of these regions.

“The main thing is that, whatever the number of people who will be named in these areas, the dispute between the de facto and Damascus authorities for their participation in the political process will remain a major problem,” he said.