Syria is holding its first elections at the end of this month, after over four decades of dictatorship and a decade of brutal civil war. But the process of electing a new Syrian parliament is far from simple and there are plenty of controversies.
A complex process
Not every Syrian will be going to a voting booth, nor will there be political parties or campaign posters. Instead, votes will be cast by various committees, which is why the country’s first election after dictatorship is being described as “indirect.”
“The reality in Syria does not permit the holding of traditional elections, given the presence of millions of internally and externally displaced persons, the absence of official documents, the fragility of the legal structure,” the interim Syrian government explained why elections were indirect, in a statement posted at the end of June.
Because of this, the resulting process to elect a new People’s Assembly will take place in several stages.
In June this year, an 11-member Supreme Committee for the People’s Assembly Elections was directly appointed by Syria’s transitional government to supervise the election.
In turn, the Supreme Committee has appointed what are known as election sub-committees in Syria’s 62 electoral districts. The districts are meant to be weighted by population so some of them have more than one seat.
In the next step, the different district sub-committees directly appoint between 30 and 50 people to represent each seat in their district. These people will form an “electoral college” — that is, a group of electors tasked with choosing parliamentarians.
When appointing these individuals, the sub-committees are supposed to take different characteristics into account, including qualifications like university degrees and professions, “social influence” — that is, people who have been active and are known in their own communities — and diversity, as well as ensuring that the group includes displaced, disabled and formerly imprisoned people.
Apart from other qualities like age and citizenship, the electoral college members should not have been part of the former regime (unless they defected during the civil war), be serving in the security forces, or have a criminal record. Twenty percent of electoral college members should be female.
Once chosen, the whole electoral college, all around Syria, is meant to number between 6,000 and 7,000 people.
Worries about presidential power
According to SANA, Syria’s official news agency, the final lists of candidates were published September 18. Any member of the public now has three days to appeal against any of the candidates they don’t think should be there.
After electoral college members have been vetted, some of them will then campaign for seats in the People’s Assembly. There are no political parties and the campaigning isn’t public; it’s meant to take a week and only happens among electoral college members.
Finally, on election day, the whole electoral college will vote for 121 members of the new Syrian parliament from within their own ranks.
The electoral process has already been postponed — officials explained that too many candidates were keen to join the electoral college — but, they say, the voting process should be complete by the end of September.
Originally there were actually 140 seats up for election but voting has been postponed in several parts of Syria — in the region of Sweida, which is dominated by Syria’s Druze minority, and in parts of Raqqa and Hassakeh, which are controlled by Syria’s Kurdish minority. This means around 19 seats won’t be voted for this month.
The Syrian transitional government says elections are postponed in those areas because of security concerns. In the recent past, there has been inter-communal and sectarian violence there, in which thousands died. But in reality, elections are postponed there because the Syrian government doesn’t actually control those areas, the Druze and Kurdish do.
After the electoral process has ended, another 70 seats will be added to the new parliament. But these parliamentarians will be directly elected by the country’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former militia leader who took on the role after his militia, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led the charge to oust dictator Bashar Assad last December.
Controversies and conflicts
There are positives to the process, Haid Haid, a Syrian analyst and senior non-resident fellow at the Paris-based Arab Reform Initiative, wrote earlier this month. “On paper, the electoral process introduces modest but meaningful improvements,” he noted, with “multiple consultative phases, mechanisms for appeal, and steps to increase women’s participation.” International observers have also been invited to monitor the process.
Additionally, the Supreme Committee is more diverse than other initiatives and isn’t dominated by Hayat Tharir al-Sham members, Haid says.
But the process is also “overshadowed by structural ambiguities and unresolved questions that leave the process vulnerable to manipulation,” and that may result in a lack of community trust, he argues.
Media reports from inside Syria indicate that many Syrians do acknowledge there’s no way to hold direct elections right now. A recent survey, undertaken by the Qatar-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies between mid-July and mid-August, found that 57% of the almost 4,000 Syrians interviewed felt that the political situation was positive.
But other Syrians have been much more critical, saying the highly-managed process is a superficial “charade,” a way to legitimize the transitional government without actually seeking genuine consensus or democracy.
Some of the most vocal critics of these elections have been members of Syria’s minorities. Over past weeks, representatives of various minority groups have published lettersor statements criticizing the process, calling it illegitimate.
Earlier this week, 14 different Syrian civil society groups also published a position paper recommending changes to the process, arguing that various aspects of the election simply give President al-Sharaa too much control over both the electoral process and the resulting People’s Assembly.
For example, under Syria’s temporary constitution, presidential decrees can only be overturned by a two-thirds majority in the People’s Assembly. This is why the 70 elected officials chosen directly by al-Sharaa will be so important — if they only represent his interests it would be very difficult to ever get a two-thirds majority acting against him in parliament.
There’s also been criticism about the role the new People’s Assembly will play, when it is finally elected. It will be tasked mostly with overhauling a raft of old laws, passing new laws to open the country up and drafting a new constitution as well as preparing for direct elections within the next three to five years.
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