Senior officials in Syria are scheduling an election to populate the nation’s Parliament, expected to take place in mid-September, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) revealed Sunday.
A top election official – Mohammed Taha al-Ahmad, chairman of the Higher Committee for People’s Assembly Elections – told SANA that elections will likely be held between September 15 and 20. Voters, he claimed, would be able to choose representatives for 140 seats out of 210; another 70 would be appointed directly by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the jihadist terror organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The government would identify eligible voters using data from the 2011 census, he said, the last time a national register of its kind was taken.
Sharaa became the president of the country in December, following the collapse of the longstanding regime of former dictator Bashar Assad. Sharaa’s HTS emerged as a splinter group from al-Qaeda under his control, during a time in which he went by the nom de guerre “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.” Following Assad’s escape from the country, Sharaa stopped wearing jihadi military fatigues, readopted his birth name, and began promising the establishment of a government representative of the Syrian people.
Sharaa was vocally negative on the possibility of any elections taking place in the country for years, however, in the immediate aftermath of the end of the civil war. Speaking to the Saudi news agency al-Arabiya in late December, Sharaa predicted it would take up to four years to organize free and fair elections in Syria, citing in particular the difficulty of finding and verifying legitimate voters.
“Any sound elections will need to carry out a comprehensive population census,” he said at the time. In that same interview, he vowed to dissolve HTS, which the United States has since delisted as a terrorist organization.
Assad fought a brutal and chaotic civil war against various rebel factions for over a decade, beginning in 2011, destroying the entirety of some of Syria’s most important urban centers. The war prompted the world’s largest refugee crisis, forcing over 6 million to flee the country and internally displacing another 7 million people, according to the United Nations.
In his interview with al-Arabiya, Sharaa also cited the need for Syria to establish a new constitution to replace the Assad-era document as an obstacle to free and fair elections. Syria adopted an “interim” constitution in March, however, immediately following a jihadist killing spree targeting the nation’s Alawite community. Assad and his family are Alawite Shia Muslims and the longstanding Alawite rule over the majority Sunni population triggered significant outrage toward the group.
Al-Ahmad, the election official, told SANA on Sunday that Damascus would use the 2011 census as a guide for staging elections. The official noted that he had met personally with Sharaa on Saturday to discuss the structure of elections.
“Al-Ahmad said that after the decree for the provisional electoral system is signed, a week will be needed to select subcommittees, followed by 15 days to form the electoral bodies,” he narrated, “then three days for candidacy applications, an additional week for campaigning and debates, with the election process scheduled to occur between September 15 and 20.”
Among other requirements to ensure the success of such elections, he added, were “a detailed timeline, campaign mechanisms, a code of conduct for voters and candidates, and provisions ensuring women’s participation of at least 20%.” He also stated the Sharaa regime was seeking “youth involvement” and the input of “civil society” organizations.
“He affirmed that the electoral process will be monitored by communities and international organizations under the committee’s coordination, with full freedom to contest lists and results,” SANA added.
SANA did not indicate that al-Ahmad offered any details regarding what could potentially be included in a “code of conduct” for candidates or what restrictions Sharaa would create for who could run for office. As Assad’s regime was collapsing, Sharaa indicated in several interviews that he hoped to establish a government based on sharia, or Islamic law, alarming members of Syria’s many religious and ethnic minority communities. Subsequent massacres of Alawite Shia and Druze people since the fall of Assad have reinforced those concerns, though Sharaa and his officials have repeatedly insisted they would not persecute non-Muslims.
The need to grant Sharaa sole power to decide who receives 70 of the Parliament’s seats, SANA reported, was due to the need for “highly skilled technocrats to fill gaps that may arise from the electoral process and ensure diverse representation.”
Al-Ahmad repeatedly insisted that Sharaa’s jihadist-led government would welcome “international oversight” of the elections. He also repeatedly mentioned the participation of women in the elections and in meetings on organizing the elections.
Quoting al-Ahmad directly in a separate article, SANA indicated that not all ideologies or political profiles would be allowed to contest the elections.
“The President stressed the necessity of excluding all those who stood with and supported the criminals, in addition to those who call for division, sectarianism,” al-Ahmad said, referring to supporters of the Assad regime.
In separate interviews, other officials have described the need to create an “electoral college” in Syria, though details of such a plan are not publicly available at press time.
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