DAMASCUS—In 1988, a Druze educational named Adham Masoud al-Qaq tried to run for Syria’s parliament, the Folks’s Meeting. Hafez al-Assad was dictator of Syria on the time and Qaq made the error of pushing for democratic reforms. He was arrested for his opposition to the regime—his third time that decade—after which imprisoned. Upon launch, he fled to Egypt, the place he lived in exile for 36 years.
When the Assad regime collapsed on Dec. 8, 2024, Qaq returned to Syria in triumph, like so lots of the regime’s detractors. Lower than a yr after that, he was again in Syrian politics. On Oct. 5, Syria held its first parliamentary elections since Ahmed al-Sharaa took energy, and Qaq was nominated to be a delegate within the Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
DAMASCUS—In 1988, a Druze educational named Adham Masoud al-Qaq tried to run for Syria’s parliament, the Folks’s Meeting. Hafez al-Assad was dictator of Syria on the time and Qaq made the error of pushing for democratic reforms. He was arrested for his opposition to the regime—his third time that decade—after which imprisoned. Upon launch, he fled to Egypt, the place he lived in exile for 36 years.
When the Assad regime collapsed on Dec. 8, 2024, Qaq returned to Syria in triumph, like so lots of the regime’s detractors. Lower than a yr after that, he was again in Syrian politics. On Oct. 5, Syria held its first parliamentary elections since Ahmed al-Sharaa took energy, and Qaq was nominated to be a delegate within the Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
Below Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded him, Syria’s parliament functioned as a largely symbolic establishment. It served to legitimize authorities coverage and typically provided enter on its formulation. Nevertheless it had no authority to hinder govt energy. Many worry that Sharaa’s authorities, whereas ostensibly transitional, is continuous that authoritarian custom.
Just a few thousand Syrians took half on this current election, by means of a tiered electoral faculty system, to fill seats in a physique that can have very restricted energy to problem Sharaa’s authority. The federal government argued in a June assertion that Syria can’t maintain conventional elections “given the presence of hundreds of thousands of internally and externally displaced individuals, the absence of official paperwork [and] the fragility of the authorized construction.”
In an interview with International Coverage, Qaq mentioned he didn’t face direct threats on this newest election. “Nevertheless,” he added, “we might clearly sense that this or that particular person would win as a consultant earlier than the voting even passed off.”
In March, Sharaa issued a constitutional declaration establishing a five-year transitional interval. It was below this framework that the “elections” had been held. Whereas the declaration grants the meeting legislative powers, these seem restricted to performing on payments initiated by the manager. The meeting may even haven’t any energy to set off elections by means of a vote of no-confidence. (As for presidential elections, Sharaa has mentioned they may take 4 to 5 years.)
“You’ll be able to’t actually name these elections,” mentioned Radwan Ziadeh, a senior fellow on the Arab Middle Washington DC. “It was extra the formation of Syrian legislative energy.” Nonetheless, those that had been afforded the chance to affix this energy construction demonstrated unbelievable enthusiasm on the marketing campaign path.
Throughout a number of candidate conferences and election occasions that International Coverage attended, a constant sample of constructive debate and civic engagement emerged—faint however real stirrings of liberal course of in a rustic lengthy disadvantaged of it.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa visits a poling station in Damascus on Oct. 5. Louai Beshara/AFP through Getty Pictures
In June, Sharaa appointed an 11-member Increased Election Committee, which oversaw the creation of electoral subcommittees throughout the nation. On this manner, the Syrian president created a cascading appointment system, with him on the prime. The subcommittees chosen a pool of delegates for every governorate, and the delegates voted amongst themselves to fill seats in parliament. Roughly 6,000 delegates had been chosen, they usually voted to fill 119 of the 210 seats. Elections for a number of constituencies had been postponed indefinitely, attributable to safety issues and tensions between native authorities and Damascus.
Seventy seats—one third of the full—had been speculated to be straight appointed by Sharaa by the tip of October. However he nonetheless hasn’t made his picks, maybe as a result of he’s been preoccupied with a string of high-profile diplomatic visits overseas. On Oct.15, Sharaa met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow On the finish of October, he was in Riyadh for an funding convention.
And on Nov. 10, Sharaa will meet with Trump on the White Home, making him the primary Syrian president to take action since Syria gained its independence from France in 1946.
In September, Qaq was signing his candidacy paperwork at an administrative workplace when two males got here by to submit certainly one of their wives as a candidate. They had been too late. “From this neighborhood, there are 20 individuals within the electoral committee, solely they’re allowed to run, and the candidates have already been chosen,” Basem Hamzeh, a member of the agricultural Damascus subcommittee, advised the 2 confused males. He mentioned the bulletins had been “throughout” social media.
Adham Masoud al-Qaq, a candidate for the Syrian parliament in rural Damascus, indicators his candidacy paperwork at an administrative workplace on Sept. 27.Fin de Pencier for International Coverage
The interplay underscored the opaque nature of those elections, with a course of solely nominally open to the general public. Subcommittees retained full authority over the ultimate picks, making the system successfully closed and inclined to corruption. And regardless of Hamzeh’s declare that there had been a broad public consciousness marketing campaign, many Syrians say they didn’t even realize an election was going down.
The subcommittees had been speculated to observe what officers described as illustration targets—not formal authorized quotas, however pointers thought to be binding in observe. These pointers referred to as for no less than 20 % of electoral faculty members to be ladies, with roughly 70 % drawn from skilled or technocratic backgrounds and 30 % made up of “conventional neighborhood notables.”
Of the 119 seats that had been voted for on Oct. 6, solely six had been received by ladies and solely 10 by minority candidates, together with Kurds, Christians, and Alawites. The overwhelming majority of seats went to Sunni males drawn from the executive and enterprise elite.
A candidate for the Syrian parliament in rural Damascus addresses different candidates at an election committee assembly on Oct. 2. Fin de Pencier picture for International Coverage
Mouyad Zaidan, a professor of legislation at Damascus State College, was on the poll in Damascus. On Sept. 27, he sat down for an interview. One week prior, he had been robbed and kidnapped after attempting to purchase a automobile on Fb market in Aleppo. His palms nonetheless bore the crimson marks from the place he was certain. Zaidan implied that the criminals had been remnants of the Assad regime.
“His loyalists are nonetheless current in society,” Zaidan mentioned. “The identical criminals who dedicated atrocities at the moment are scattered amongst us, participating in theft, fraud, kidnapping, and homicide.”
Zaidan is a Sunni Muslim, a part of Syria’s demographic majority. For the primary time in many years, Sunnis dominate the political order in Damascus. Nevertheless it stays unclear to what extent political Islam will affect state coverage.
“Within the coming stage, God prepared, society will undertake a free-market financial system appropriate with Islamic legislation—one which avoids the socialism of the earlier period,” Zaidan mentioned.
On Sept. 30, delegates within the metropolis of Homs gathered for a gathering to current their political platforms to at least one one other. A girl named Maysoun Shams al-Din took to the stage and offered a powerful resume—a grasp’s diploma in literature and many years of expertise as an auditor and administration advisor.
FP approached Din for an interview after her presentation. However an election official intervened, arguing that the federal government’s press accreditation “says you’re allowed to interview individuals, not candidates.” Press freedom, identical to democracy itself, is a piece in progress in Syria.
Throughout that occasion, and one other within the Damascus suburb of Douma on Oct. 2nd at which Qaq appeared, the main focus was on reconstruction and the financial system. Douma is certainly one of a number of Damascus suburbs that was decimated by Russian and Syrian airstrikes within the first few years of the Syrian civil warfare and has remained in destroy ever since. The convention corridor the place the assembly was held that day was one of many few buildings on the block unscathed by warfare.
When Qaq took to the stage, he devoted most of his speech to the philosophy of statecraft. “The Prophet didn’t construct a spiritual state; he constructed a civil one, which he referred to as ‘al-Madinah al-Munawwarah’—the enlightened metropolis. A city-state constructed to face the divisions of tribes, clans, and minorities. We are able to study a lot from that nice instance,” he mentioned.
Qaq didn’t win his seat. Neither did Zaidan. However each had been grateful to have participated. The delegates that the subcommittees chosen appeared to be, by and huge, achieved and regionally revered. In assembly after assembly, delegates embraced the method with shocking zeal—conscious it might be a facade however keen to participate in one thing that resembled politics.
“I had an opportunity to succeed, had it not been for some neighborhoods in Damascus banding collectively to help an inventory they backed. However we met with them, and they’re, God prepared, worthy of representing Damascus. We ask Allah for everybody’s success and prosperity,” Zaidan mentioned.
