Analysis
The first major test of Syria's transition to democracy
The new regime insists on asking for patience. After all, many rhetorically ask, what can be expected after half a century of dictatorship and 14 years of civil war?
Syria has scheduled legislative elections for mid-September. The announcement came from an electoral commission whose 11 members were all chosen by Ahmad Sharaa, the former militia leader who replaced the deposed president Bashar al-Assad in December. The Syrian parliament – the People’s Assembly – has been closed ever since. In a few weeks, however, the new deputies of a “liberated Syria” will take their seats on the dusty benches of the parliament building on Salhiyeh Street.
The man widely referred to as a “transitional president” intends to govern for at least five years, until 2030. Five years is the term of validity for the provisional constitution, which legitimizes the electoral commission now preparing for the September vote. The parliament will have a 30-month mandate – two and a half years – but this can be renewed for another 30 months through an unclear procedure, which would make it last until 2030.
Furthermore, for the first time in the country’s history, the polls may be monitored by unspecified “international observers.” However, given the tight timeline between the announcement and the election, any presence of foreign observers will likely be symbolic, serving only to legitimize the new regime.
And that’s where the “good” news ends. The electoral procedure has a series of controversial points that contradict the rhetoric of a “transition” marked by openness, inclusion, and transparency. First of all, these will not be direct elections. It will not be “the people” who elect their “assembly.” Deputies will be chosen, and only some elected, through a complex system with layer upon layer that ultimately answers entirely to Sharaa.
The head of state will appoint a third of the 210 deputies (down from the previous 250) himself. The other two-thirds will be elected from a pool of candidates selected by regional and local electoral committees, which are themselves formed by members handpicked by the presidentially appointed national commission. According to the constitution in force for the next five years, the new rais effectively controls the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of power.
“These will certainly not be classic legislative elections,” the commission’s chairman, Muhammad al-Ahmad – a Sharaa loyalist and former minister in the Idlib shadow government – said at the end of June. “We are working to build a path for a transitional phase.”
The new regime insists on asking for patience. After all, many rhetorically ask, what can be expected after half a century of dictatorship and 14 years of civil war? Here, history offers some perspective: for 12 years, from 1961 to 1973, Syria held no legislative elections at all. During the turbulent period between the end of its union with Nasser’s Egypt (1958-61) and the rise of Hafez al-Assad – passing through three different Baathist coups (1963, 1966, 1970) – the doors of the Salhiyeh Street building remained shut. Parliament resumed functioning only with the new Assad constitution of 1973, but for more than 50 years it was reduced to a tool for co-opting elites from regional capitals. The multi-party system was merely a facade for the rule of the single Ba’ath party, another instrument for the local distribution of power.
Today, driven by the rhetoric of “a new world moving forward,” one wonders if it is appropriate to measure the political choices of Damascus’s new rulers by the yardstick of the past under Assad’s rule, which was so predictive of the present’s tragedies. With such a centralized model of government, Sharaa and his loyalists seem to be replicating the authoritarian practices of the past. Another deeply problematic aspect emerges from the electoral process: the concentration of power in the hands of those who already hold it – namely, the financial, paramilitary, and political elites of the capitals in western Syria. The peripheries, whether geographical (Latakia, Qunaytra, Sweida, Raqqa, Hasake, Deir az-Zor), communities (Kurds, Druze, Alawites, Christians), or social groups (women and other vulnerable groups) will be poorly represented in the new parliament. Although much emphasis has been put on increasing the quota for women to 20%, it is highly likely that the usual chauvinistic and patriarchal logic will prevail when local committees select two-thirds of the deputies.
In this “new Syria,” the Syrian women who have spent decades on the front lines of protests, sit-ins, civil society meetings, and the state’s peripheral institutions still do not seem to merit appropriate representation in parliament.
The members of the electoral commission reject these accusations. They assure that deputies – both those appointed by Sharaa and those “elected” by local committees – will be chosen based on their “competence.” The electoral procedure itself formalizes two macro-categories of deputies: the “competent,” referred to as technocrats, and the “dignitaries,” who are representatives of the local established power, replacing the old Ba’athist division of peasants and workers. The latter gives way to what looks like a double ploy: dignitaries are brought into parliament to consolidate central power in certain corners of the country, while the “competent” will be deemed so only to the extent that they serve the interests of the new government. On that note, one might ask what are the competences that the 11 members (nine men, two women) of the electoral commission actually possess.
Among them are graduates in medicine, Islamic studies, journalism, sociology, geology, engineering, and international relations, but none have any juridical background. Two of them are “independent”; seven were part of the opposition platform supported by Turkey and Western countries; and two others, including the commission’s chairman, come from Sharaa’s power base in Idlib.
Thus composed, the electoral commission is also tasked with ruling on the legal challenges that will inevitably arise for the September elections. But that hardly matters: the immediate task is to hastily form the regional and local committees from which the “candidates,” carefully divided into the “competent” and the “dignitaries,” will be hand-picked.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/in-siria-una-testa-un-voto-quello-di-sharaa on 2025-09-03