Syrian electoral school members line as much as solid their ballots in a parliamentary election at a polling station in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025.
Omar Sanadiki/AP
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Omar Sanadiki/AP
BEIRUT — Syria is holding parliamentary elections on Sunday for the primary time because the fall of the nation’s longtime autocratic chief, Bashar Assad, who was unseated in a insurgent offensive in December.
Underneath the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty, Syria held common elections wherein all Syrian residents may vote. However in apply, the Assad-led Baath Celebration at all times dominated the parliament, and the votes have been extensively considered sham elections.
Outdoors election analysts mentioned the one really aggressive a part of the method got here earlier than election day — with the interior major system within the Baath Celebration, when get together members jockeyed for positions on the checklist.
The elections to be held on Sunday, nevertheless, is not going to be a totally democratic course of both. Quite, a lot of the Individuals’s Meeting seats might be voted on by electoral schools in every district, whereas one-third of the seats might be immediately appointed by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Regardless of not being a well-liked vote, the election outcomes will seemingly be taken as a barometer of how severe the interim authorities are about inclusivity, significantly of girls and minorities.
Here is a breakdown of how the elections will work and what to observe.
How the system works
The Individuals’s Meeting has 210 seats, of which two-thirds might be elected on Sunday and one-third appointed. The elected seats are voted upon by electoral schools in districts all through the nation, with the variety of seats for every district distributed by inhabitants.
A Syrian electoral school member casts his vote throughout the parliamentary elections at Latakia’s Governor poll station, within the coastal metropolis of Latakia, Syria, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025.
Hussein Malla/AP
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Hussein Malla/AP
In principle, a complete of seven,000 electoral school members in 60 districts — chosen from a pool of candidates in every district by committees appointed for the aim — ought to vote for 140 seats.
Nonetheless, the elections in Sweida province and in areas of the northeast managed by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been indefinitely postponed attributable to tensions between the native authorities in these areas and the central authorities in Damascus, which means that these seats will stay empty.
In apply, due to this fact, round 6,000 electoral school members will vote in 50 districts for about 120 seats.
The biggest district is the one containing town of Aleppo, the place 700 electoral school members will vote to fill 14 seats, adopted by town of Damascus, with 500 members voting for 10 seats.
All candidates come from the membership of the electoral schools.
Following Assad’s ouster, the interim authorities dissolved all present political events, most of which have been carefully affiliated with the Assad authorities, and haven’t but arrange a system for brand spanking new events to register, so all candidates are working as people.
Why no well-liked vote
The interim authorities have mentioned that it will be unattainable to create an correct voter registry and conduct a well-liked vote at this stage, on condition that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been internally or externally displaced by the nation’s almost 14-year civil warfare and plenty of have misplaced private paperwork.
This parliament can have a 30-month time period, throughout which the federal government is meant to organize the bottom for a well-liked vote within the subsequent elections.
The shortage of a well-liked vote has drawn criticism of being undemocratic, however some analysts say the federal government’s causes are authentic.
“We do not even know what number of Syrians are in Syria immediately,” due to the massive variety of displaced individuals, mentioned Benjamin Feve, a senior analysis analyst on the Syria-focused Karam Shaar Advisory consulting agency.
“It could be actually tough to attract electoral lists immediately in Syria,” or to rearrange the logistics for Syrians within the diaspora to vote of their nations of residence, he mentioned.
Haid Haid, a senior analysis fellow on the Arab Reform Initiative and the Chatham Home assume tank mentioned that the extra regarding subject was the dearth of clear standards below which electors have been chosen.
“Particularly in terms of selecting the subcommittees and the electoral schools, there isn’t a oversight, and the entire course of is kind of doubtlessly weak to manipulation,” he mentioned.
A Syrian electoral school member casts his vote throughout a parliamentary election at Latakia’s Governor poll station, within the coastal metropolis of Latakia, Syria, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025.
Hussein Malla/AP
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Hussein Malla/AP
There have been widespread objections after electoral authorities “eliminated names from the preliminary lists that have been revealed, and they didn’t present detailed info as to why these names have been eliminated,” he mentioned.
Questions on inclusivity
There isn’t any set quota for illustration of girls and non secular or ethnic minorities within the parliament.
Girls have been required to make up 20% of electoral school members, however that didn’t assure that they’d make up a comparable proportion of candidates or of these elected.
State-run information company SANA, citing the top of the nationwide elections committee, Mohammed Taha al-Ahmad, reported that ladies made up 14% of the 1,578 candidates who made it to the ultimate lists. In some districts, ladies make up 30 or 40% of all candidates, whereas in others, there are not any feminine candidates.
In the meantime, the exclusion of the Druze-majority Sweida province and Kurdish-controlled areas within the northeast in addition to the dearth of set quotas for minorities has raised questions on illustration of communities that aren’t a part of the Sunni Arab nationwide majority.
The problem is especially delicate after outbreaks of sectarian violence in latest months wherein a whole lot of civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities have been killed, lots of them by government-affiliated fighters.
Feve famous that electoral districts had been drawn in such a approach as to create minority-majority districts.
“What the federal government may have finished if it wished to restrict the variety of minorities, it may have merged these districts or these localities with majority Sunni Muslim districts,” he mentioned. “They might have principally drowned the minorities which is what they did not do.”
Officers have additionally pointed to the one-third of parliament immediately appointed by al-Sharaa as a mechanism to “guarantee enchancment within the inclusivity of the legislative physique,” Haid mentioned. The thought is that if few ladies or minorities are elected by the electoral schools, the president would come with the next proportion in his picks.
The shortage of illustration of Sweida and the northeast stays problematic, Haid mentioned — even when al-Sharaa appoints legislators from these areas.
“The underside line is that no matter how many individuals might be appointed from these areas, the dispute between the de facto authorities and Damascus over their participation within the political course of will stay a significant subject,” he mentioned.
