Not yet a democracy: Syria elects a new parliament, but its legitimacy is in doubt

In short, Syria has no democratic tradition to draw on. The new authorities have promised to draft and implement clear rules regarding party formation and political participation in the coming years, but until then, the parliament will have to be formed on a non-party basis.

Elections under control

The new interim Syrian constitution reduces the number of members in the country’s unicameral parliament from the Assad-era 250 down to 210. Ahmed al-Sharaa has been given the right to appoint 70 lawmakers of his choosing, and according to the temporary rules for forming parliament, these people are to be selected based on professionalism rather than personal loyalty to the president. The remaining 140 seats are allocated through a vote conducted via an electoral college system.

Unlike in the United States, however, Syrians did not even have the chance to vote for the electors themselves. Those electors — more than 6,000 in total — were selected by staff of the regional subcommittees of the Higher Commission for the Elections of the People’s Assembly, without any direct participation by voters.

Electors may not be members of the military, intelligence services, the Cabinet, provincial governors’ offices, or election commissions. There is also an explicit ban on allowing senior Assad-era officials to participate unless they can prove their loyalty to the renewed republic. This clause is one of the most controversial, because neither the law nor presidential decrees spell out any procedure for proving loyalty.

Another contentious point is the special status required of every would-be elector. Electoral lists were supposed to include only people who have “notable social influence,” are recognized professionals in their field, or are opinion leaders or intellectuals. Again though, there are no explanations in the official documents for how professionalism, intellectual standing, or social influence is to be measured.

Similar problems exist in the requirements for parliamentary candidates themselves. The law states that at least 20% of parliament must be women, at least 3% must be people with disabilities, 70% of lawmakers must be prominent representatives of professional circles, and 30% must be community leaders, tribal chiefs, or employees of nongovernmental organizations. But nowhere does it specify, for example, how to determine who counts as a “prominent” representative of professional circles.

The task of resolving all of these disputes falls to members of the Syrian election authority mentioned above: the Higher Commission for the Elections of the People’s Assembly and their colleagues in regional branches. These are the same people who selected both the electoral college and the pool of candidates from which the college then chose the lawmakers. In other words, both electors and candidates pass through the same filter.

The commission is formed by presidential appointees. Its leadership is made up of people appointed by al-Sharaa’s decree, and the post of commission chair is held by his ally in the “revolutionary struggle,” Mohammed al-Ahmed. The president’s appointees, in turn, appoint their own representatives in cities and provinces, and those “appointees of appointees” then decide who is worthy of becoming an elector or a candidate for parliament — and who is not.

On paper, anyone who disagrees with any election official’s decision (and that chain of authority ultimately runs up to the president himself) can appeal to the Supreme Court. However, that is unlikely to help, as the makeup of the court is also determined entirely by decrees from the very same al-Sharaa.

Barely different from Assad

The system, critics say, differs little from Assad’s and allows al-Sharaa to keep full control of parliament. The authorities answer that this approach is temporary, that the Syrian government currently has no other electoral tools at its disposal, and that the next elections will be held under completely different rules — after the new assembly actually drafts them.