
Syrian electoral school members line as much as forged 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 might vote. However in apply, the Assad-led Baath Get together at all times dominated the parliament, and the votes had been broadly thought to be sham elections.
Outdoors election analysts stated the one actually aggressive a part of the method got here earlier than election day — with the interior major system within the Baath Get together, when occasion members jockeyed for positions on the record.
The elections to be held on Sunday, nonetheless, won’t be a completely democratic course of both. Slightly, a lot of the Folks’s Meeting seats will likely be voted on by electoral schools in every district, whereas one-third of the seats will likely be instantly appointed by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Regardless of not being a preferred vote, the election outcomes will doubtless be taken as a barometer of how severe the interim authorities are about inclusivity, significantly of ladies and minorities.
Here is a breakdown of how the elections will work and what to observe.
How the system works
The Folks’s Meeting has 210 seats, of which two-thirds will likely 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 through 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.
Nevertheless, 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, subsequently, round 6,000 electoral school members will vote in 50 districts for about 120 seats.
The most important district is the one containing the town of Aleppo, the place 700 electoral school members will vote to fill 14 seats, adopted by the 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 had been carefully affiliated with the Assad authorities, and haven’t but arrange a system for brand new events to register, so all candidates are working as people.
Why no fashionable vote
The interim authorities have stated that it could be unimaginable to create an correct voter registry and conduct a preferred vote at this stage, provided that hundreds of thousands of Syrians had been internally or externally displaced by the nation’s practically 14-year civil conflict and lots of have misplaced private paperwork.
This parliament may have a 30-month time period, throughout which the federal government is meant to organize the bottom for a preferred vote within the subsequent elections.
The dearth of a preferred 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 at present,” due to the big variety of displaced folks, stated Benjamin Feve, a senior analysis analyst on the Syria-focused Karam Shaar Advisory consulting agency.
“It could be actually troublesome to attract electoral lists at present in Syria,” or to rearrange the logistics for Syrians within the diaspora to vote of their international locations of residence, he stated.
Haid Haid, a senior analysis fellow on the Arab Reform Initiative and the Chatham Home assume tank stated that the extra regarding difficulty was the shortage of clear standards below which electors had been chosen.
“Particularly with regards to selecting the subcommittees and the electoral schools, there is no such thing as a oversight, and the entire course of is form of doubtlessly weak to manipulation,” he stated.

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 had been printed, and they didn’t present detailed data as to why these names had been eliminated,” he stated.
Questions on inclusivity
There isn’t a set quota for illustration of ladies and non secular or ethnic minorities within the parliament.
Ladies had been required to make up 20% of electoral school members, however that didn’t assure that they might make up a comparable share 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 girls 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 aren’t 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 shortage 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 tons of of civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities had 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 might have finished if it needed to restrict the variety of minorities, it might have merged these districts or these localities with majority Sunni Muslim districts,” he stated. “They may have mainly drowned the minorities which is what they did not do.”
Officers have additionally pointed to the one-third of parliament instantly appointed by al-Sharaa as a mechanism to “guarantee enchancment within the inclusivity of the legislative physique,” Haid stated. The thought is that if few ladies or minorities are elected by the electoral schools, the president would come with the next share in his picks.
The dearth of illustration of Sweida and the northeast stays problematic, Haid stated — even when al-Sharaa appoints legislators from these areas.
“The underside line is that no matter how many individuals will likely 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 serious difficulty,” he stated.