Syria is holding parliamentary elections on Sunday for the very first time because the fall of the nation’s very long time autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, who was unseated in a rebel offensive in December.
Under the 50-year guideline of the Assad dynasty, Syria held routine elections in which all Syrian people might vote. In practice, the Assad-led Baath Party constantly controlled the parliament, and the votes were commonly related to as sham elections.
Outdoors election experts stated the only genuinely competitive part of the procedure came before election day– with the internal main system in the Baath Party, when celebration members jockeyed for positions on the list.
The elections to be hung on Sunday, nevertheless, will not be a totally democratic procedure either. Rather, the majority of individuals’s Assembly seats will be voted on by electoral colleges in each district, while one-third of the seats will be straight designated by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
In spite of not being a popular vote, the election outcomes will likely be taken as a barometer of how severe the interim authorities have to do with inclusivity, especially of females and minorities.
Here’s a breakdown of how the elections will work and what to view:
How the system works
Individuals’s Assembly has 210 seats, of which two-thirds will be chosen on Sunday and one-third selected. The chosen seats are voted upon by electoral colleges in districts throughout the nation, with the variety of seats for each district dispersed by population.
In theory, an overall of 7,000 electoral college members in 60 districts– picked from a swimming pool of candidates in each district by committees designated for the function– ought to elect 140 seats.
The elections in Sweida province and in locations of the northeast managed by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have actually been forever delayed due to stress in between the regional authorities in those locations and the main federal government in Damascus, suggesting that those seats will stay empty.
In practice, for that reason, around 6,000 electoral college members will enact 50 districts for about 120 seats.
The biggest district is the one including the city of Aleppo, where 700 electoral college members will vote to fill 14 seats, followed by the city of Damascus, with 500 members choosing 10 seats.
All prospects originate from the subscription of the electoral colleges.
Following Assad’s ouster, the interim authorities liquified all existing political celebrations, the majority of which were carefully connected with the Assad federal government, and have actually not yet established a system for brand-new celebrations to sign up, so all prospects are running as people.
Why no popular vote
The interim authorities have actually stated that it would be difficult to develop a precise citizen windows registry and carry out a popular vote at this phase, considered that countless Syrians were internally or externally displaced by the nation’s almost 14-year civil war and lots of have actually lost individual files.
This parliament will have a 30-month term, throughout which the federal government is expected to prepare the ground for a popular vote in the next elections.
The absence of a popular vote has actually drawn criticism of being undemocratic, however some experts state the federal government’s factors are genuine.
“We do not even understand the number of Syrians remain in Syria today,” due to the fact that of the a great deal of displaced individuals, stated Benjamin Feve, a senior research study expert at the Syria-focused Karam Shaar Advisory speaking with company.
“It would be actually hard to draw electoral lists today in Syria,” or to organize the logistics for Syrians in the diaspora to enact their nations of house, he stated.
Haid Haid, a senior research study fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative and the Chatham House believe tank stated that the more worrying problem was the absence of clear requirements under which electors were chosen.
“Especially when it pertains to picking the subcommittees and the electoral colleges, there is no oversight, and the entire procedure is sort of possibly susceptible to adjustment,” he stated.
There have actually been prevalent objections after electoral authorities “eliminated names from the preliminary lists that were released, and they did not offer comprehensive info regarding why those names were eliminated,” he stated.
Concerns about inclusivity
There is no set quota for representation of ladies and spiritual or ethnic minorities in the parliament.
Females were needed to comprise 20 percent of electoral college members, however that did not ensure that they would comprise a similar portion of prospects or of those chosen.
State-run news company SANA, mentioning the head of the nationwide elections committee, Mohammed Taha al-Ahmad, reported that females comprised 14 percent of the 1,578 prospects who made it to the last lists. In some districts, females comprise 30 or 40 percent of all prospects, while in others, there are no female prospects.
The exemption of the Druze-majority Sweida province and Kurdish-controlled locations in the northeast as well as the absence of set quotas for minorities has actually raised concerns about representation of neighborhoods that are not part of the Sunni Arab nationwide bulk.
The concern is especially delicate after break outs of sectarian violence in current months in which numerous civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities were eliminated, much of them by government-affiliated fighters.
Feve kept in mind that electoral districts had actually been attracted such a method regarding develop minority-majority districts.
“What the federal government might have done if it wished to restrict the variety of minorities, it might have combined these districts or these regions with bulk Sunni Muslim districts,” he stated. “They might have generally drowned the minorities which is what they didn’t do.” Authorities have actually likewise indicated the one-third of parliament straight designated by al-Sharaa as a system to “make sure enhancement in the inclusivity of the legal body,” Haid stated. The concept is that if couple of females or minorities are chosen by the electoral colleges, the president would consist of a greater portion in his choices.
The absence of representation of Sweida and the northeast stays troublesome, Haid stated– even if al-Sharaa appoints lawmakers from those locations.
“The bottom line is that despite the number of individuals will be selected from those locations, the disagreement in between the de facto authorities and Damascus over their involvement in the political procedure will stay a significant concern,” he stated.
Released on October 5, 2025
