Syrian democracy campaigners wary of upcoming 'selected' elections

Middle East Eye

7 days ago

Syria is set to hold its first elections since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and concerns have been raised over plans for the president to select a third of parliamentarians and tightly control the remaining two-thirds.
The elections, set to take place between 15 and 20 September, will be based on a principle of 'selection and election" according to the country's newly created electoral body.
Nawar Najma, spokesperson for the Higher Committee for People's Assembly Election, told Rudaw last week that two-thirds of the parliament would be elected by "electoral bodies", themselves formed by subcommittees whose members would be selected by his department after "extensive consultations".
Each electoral body would be composed of roughly 50 people who would elect a member of the parliament.
He added that a "basic condition must be that they absolutely do not support, neither in word nor deed, the defunct [Assad] regime".
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"They must also have no affiliation with any of the security forces or the army to ensure the neutrality of the military apparatus and the interior ministry as well," he said.
The new assembly will have a renewable mandate of 36 months, according to the constitutional declaration adopted in March, and will exercise legislative powers until a permanent constitution is adopted and new elections held.
The criteria for the new electoral system, which the government has said is "interim", has provoked criticism from rights groups and pro-democracy campaigners who see it as a potential power grab on behalf of President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Razan Rashidi, executive director of The Syria Campaign, said her organisation would be "keeping an eye" on the process.
'Since the start of the revolution in 2011, the people of Syria have been dreaming of having fair and democratic elections'
- Razan Rashidi, The Syrian Campaign
"It is worrying that [a] third of the seats will be assigned by the interim president himself, while an electoral college in each province in Syria will vote for the elected seats," she told Middle East Eye.
Rashidi fled Syria after the beginning of the country's civil war in 2011 and, until Assad was toppled in December, worked under an alias due to safety concerns.
While she was overjoyed at Assad's overthrow, the direction taken by Sharaa's government has worried her and she expressed concerns about the "transparency and legitimacy" of the upcoming elections as well as "how much it will be a real representation of Syria's diverse communities, including female representation, especially after the appointment of an almost all-male government to rule the country.
"Since the start of the revolution in 2011, the people of Syria have been dreaming of having fair and democratic elections, something that many of us, even older generations, didn't get to practise at all under the rule of the authoritarian regime," she said.
"Our struggle to make that dream come true continues.'
'Sham' elections
Under Assad, the People's Assembly was effectively a rubber-stamping body for the government.
Elections held under Assad were denounced as a "sham" by rights groups and opposition figures, with presidential elections regularly returning more than 95 percent of the vote for the former president.
Since Assad's overthrow by an alliance led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former affiliate of al-Qaeda, there has been much debate about the direction the new government will steer the country in.
At the same time as attempting to rebuild relations with the international community and secure help in reconstructing the devastated country, the government has been asserting its control over not only state institutions and the security services, but a range of civil society organisations, including appointing trade union leaders and members of the chambers of commerce.
Syria asks Turkey for defence support following Sweida violence Read More »
But the government has struggled to maintain its authority over much of the deeply fractured country.
Attacks by Assad loyalists in the coastal province of Latakia following his overthrow provoked a violent sectarian backlash against the minority Alawite population, which the former president and his family were members of.
At least 1,500 Alawites were killed in the subsequent violence, with a Reuters investigation tracing much of it back to officials in Damascus.
The government has also sought to to stymie violence in the southern province of Sweida, where violence between members of the Druze minority, Bedouin tribesman and state forces had also seen more than 1,000 people killed since the beginning of July.
Violence continued in the province over the weekend with four killed on Sunday following an attack by armed groups on state forces.
"Sharaa does not want to deal with political and social actors that are organised," said Joseph Daher, a Swiss Syrian professor at the University of Lausanne.
He told MEE that he saw the new government pursuing the creation of a new "ruling regime" with centralised power, but that it still lacked the capacity to effectively assert its authority.
"I think the lack and the failure to control Sweida, not only because of Israeli attacks, but also local resistance, is also an indication that this is one of the contradictions of this government," said Daher.
"That it wants to seek monopolisation, centralisation of power, but at the same time is quite weak, whether militarily, human capacities, financially, politically."
'Decentralisation'
Last week Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani was in Moscow to meet with Russian officials to discuss "post-conflict reconstruction" and, most likely, the issue of Russia's bases in the country.
The Russian government was a staunch backer of Assad during the civil war, regularly launching air strikes on opposition-held areas, including those held by HTS, of which Shaibani was a founding member.
The Syrian government's apparent attempts to repair relations with its erstwhile enemies has, to some, stood in contrast with much of its domestic policy, where the gaps between different ethnic, religious and political groups have remained vast.
'As Syrian authorities work to establish new political structures, they must guarantee the right to political participation for all Syrians'
- Adam Coogle, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch told MEE the recent turmoil in Syria made it vital that ordinary citizens could hold the state to account.
'As Syrian authorities work to establish new political structures, they must guarantee the right to political participation for all Syrians," said Adam Coogle, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch.
"Given the rampant unchecked authority of the previous government, it is paramount for Syria to establish independent systems for holding the government accountable for violations.'
While the current interim constitution is set to expire after five years, the tightly controlled nature of September's elections has made some Syrian democracy activists wary of a return to the worst aspects of the Assad era, when both parliament and civil society were tightly controlled by Damascus.
Daher said that there needed to be programme of decentralisation in Syria as well as genuine political inclusion on the part of the government, rather than symbolic representatives of religious and ethnic communities.
"It could be one aspect of it, you know, the election, one man, one vote, but it cannot be limited to this. We need real political participation in an inclusively democratic way," said Daher.
"This starts, for example, with allowing regions to elect their own representatives, whether in Sweida or the northeast, and throughout Syria."