What to expect as Syria holds first parliamentary elections since Assad’s ouster : NPR

Beyut – Syria holds the parliamentary elections on Sunday for the first time since the fall of the long -standing autocratic leader of the country Bashar al -Assad, who was not appointed in December in the attack of the rebels.

In accordance with the 50-year board of the Assada dynasty, Syria held regular elections in which all Syria citizens could vote. But in practice, the Baata party, led by Assad, always dominated the parliament, and the voices were widely considered as fictitious elections.

Analysts outside the elections stated that the only competitive part of the process was presented before the election day – with the internal main system in the Baat party, when the party members threw it in the list.

Elections that will be held on Sunday, however, will not be a completely democratic process. Rather, most places at the national assemblies will vote in election colleges in each area, while intermediate president Ahmad Ashmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Akhmad Akhmad Akhmad Ahmad Akhmad Akhmad Akhmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad Ahmad.

Despite the fact that the election results are not a popular voice, the election results will probably be perceived as a barometer of how serious temporary authorities relate to inclusiveness, especially women and minorities.

Here is the destruction of how the elections will work and what to look.

How the system works

The national assembly has 210 seats, of which two -thirds will be elected on Sunday, and one third is scheduled. Selected places voted in voting colleges in districts across the country, and the number of places for each area is distributed by the population.

Theoretically, a total of 7,000 members of the college of voters in 60 districts – the candidates selected from the pool in each district appointed for this purpose – should vote for 140 seats.

Nevertheless, the elections in the province of Sveid and in the regions of the north-east, controlled by Kurdish Syrian democratic forces, were delayed for indefinite time due to tension between local authorities in these regions and the central government in Damascus, which means that these places will remain empty.

Therefore, in practice, about 6,000 college members will vote in 50 areas for 120 seats.

The largest area is the one that is located in the city of Aleppo, where 700 members of the college of voters will vote for filling 14 seats, followed by the city of Damascus, and 500 members voted in 10 seats.

All candidates come from membership in election colleges.

After the assad of Assad, the temporary authorities dismissed all existing political parties, most of which were closely connected with the Assad government and have not yet created a system for registering new parties, so all candidates work as individuals.

Why there is no popular vote

The temporary authorities stated that it would be impossible to create an accurate register of voters and hold a popular vote at this stage, given that the millions of Syrians were internally or from outside almost 14-year civil war of the country, and many lost their personal documents.

This parliament will have a 30-month period during which the government must prepare the ground for popular voting in the next elections.

The lack of popular vote caused criticism from a non -somocrat, but some analysts say that the reasons for the government are legal.

“We don’t even know how many Syrians are in Syria today”, due to a large number of displaced people, said Benjamin Fave, a senior consulting analyst in consulting Karam Shaar, focused on Syria.

“Today in Syria it would be very difficult to make lists of voters” or organize logistics for the Syrians in the diaspora to vote in their living countries, he said.

Hyde Hyde, senior researcher at the Arabic reform initiative and the analytical center of the House Chatem, said that more than the problem of the lack of clear criteria in accordance with which voters were selected.

“Especially when it comes to choosing subcommittees and election colleges, there is no control, and the whole process is potentially vulnerable to manipulations,” he said.

The objections were widespread after the electoral authorities “deleted the names from the original lists that were published, and they did not provide detailed information about why these names were deleted,” he said.

Questions about inclusiveness

In parliament there is no established quota for the representation of women and religious or ethnic minorities.

Women had to make up 20% of the college of voters, but this did not guarantee that they would be a comparable percentage of candidates or the elect.

San's state information agency, referring to the head of the National Elections Committee Mohammed Tah Al-Ahmad, said that women amounted to 14% of 1578 candidates who fell into final lists. In some areas, women make up 30 or 40% of all candidates, while in others there are no candidates.

Meanwhile, the exclusion of the province of Sveid Friends and Kurdish, controlled in the northeast, as well as the absence of established quotas for minorities, raised questions about the representative office of communities that are not part of the national majority of the Sunnis.

This issue is especially sensitive after outbreaks of sectarian violence in recent months, when hundreds of civilians from Alavites and Druzov have been killed, many of whom were associated with the government of the fighters.

Fei noted that the electoral areas were drawn in such a way as to create minority areas.

“What the government could do if it wanted to limit the number of minorities, it could unite these areas or these settlements with most Sunni Muslim areas,” he said. “They could mainly drown the minorities that they did not do.”

Officials also indicated one-third of the parliament, directly assigned to ASh-Sharaa as a mechanism for “ensuring the improving the inclusive of the legislative body,” Hyde said. The idea is that if few women or minorities were elected voting colleges, the president will include a higher percentage in his elections.

Hide said that the lack of a representative office of Sveida and the northeast remains problematic, even if al-Sharaa prescribes legislators from these areas.

“The bottom line is that regardless of how many people will be appointed from these areas, the dispute between the actual authorities of the authorities and Damascus about their participation in the political process will remain a serious problem,” he said.