It is seen as a milestone: Syriain the five decades of repression of the Asad, he celebrated multiple elections, all of them rigged to deliver power to the family in command and their Party, the Baaz. This Sunday, however, the shots have changed, and the Arab country votes for the first time after the fall of the previous regime, in December last year, and the end of the Syrian civil war.
These elections, thus, will serve to choose the composition of the Syrian parliamentformed by 210 deputies. A third of the Lower Househowever, he will not be voted this Sunday, but will be subsequently elected directly by the current interim Syrian president, Ahmed Al Sharaa. The remaining two thirds are voted this Sunday, but with several nuances: only 6.000 personas In all Syria they have been called to the polls.
They are the members of the Electoral Collegesa group of local bosses, qualified professionals and technocrats. Of them, they leave, 1,500 candidatesthat have been vetoed by a Electoral Committee also chosen by finger by Al Sharaa. There are more limitations: this Sunday’s elections are not held in the east of the country, region controlled by the Kurdosirias militias of YPGand in the region of Sweidaunder control of Druss militias.
Limited electoral system
Damascus authorities, when they presented this new electoral system, justified the limitations imposed “To the lack of a population census valid and al Forced displacement of millions of Syrians during the last 13 years of civil war. ”
Analysts, thus, see these Syrian elections not as a tPopular feeling ermometer of the punished citizenship of the Arab country, but as a sample of Al Sharaa’s intention to lead a Inclusive post-war processboth with the minorities as with women. The electoral norm has not established quotas in the lists of the elections: in total, women candidates for a seat are only 14% of the total candidates.
The established system, however, guarantees that the real number of parliamentary women will be much lower, since the representation system will be the same as follows in USA or the United Kingdom: The winner in a region stays with the only district chair. This facilitates the choice of men, better socially placed, for the positions available.
The President’s will
The key to these elections, then, will reside in which individuals and profiles will choose Sharaa to determine the last third of Parliament. To date, the interim Syrian president has been characterized by maintaining in his Circle of power Only to his most loyal trusted men. All of them were members of the civil or military government that to Sharaa and his militia, Hayat Tayrir Al Shamthey kept in the northern region of Idlebon the Turkish border, during the civil war.
“If the president selects individuals subject to his direct influence, this would give him the ability to command and Approve decrees to pleasurewithout any effective opposition, ”he writes Menstruation menstruationmember of the think tank Arab Reform Initiativewhich continues:
“We are at an important moment: your decision [a la hora de escoger la composición final del parlamento sirio] will serve or legitimize a fragile transition o para alas of a public cynicism increasingly widespread. But so far what we have seen is a Very vulnerable electoral process and potentially manipulable. The electoral authorities have eliminated names of the lists, and have not given official reasons for these decisions, ”says Haid Haid.
A stagnant transition
According to the road map established by Sharaa, Syria will not go to presidential elections with Universal suffrage even within a minimum of five years. Until then, however, there is much in a political transition with many questions, starting with sporadic violence Against Alauí minorities on the Mediterranean coast and Drusa in Sweida.
The big doubt, however, is in the east of the country, with an autonomous Kurdish administration – with its own armed militia – that to date has refused to integrate into the government and Army of apricot.
The YPG Kurdas, supported during the last decade by the US during the fight against the Islamic State (EI)they demand the creation of a federal system In Syria, something that the new Damascus government – and Washington and Türkiye, two of the great allies of the new executive of Al Sharaa – reject.
Negotiations between Damascus and Kurdish militias have frozen, and the fear of a fighting reactivation In Syria and a joint military operation between the Syrian and Turkish army, a possibility for now, is increasingly prevailing.
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