Lebanese newspaper: Al-Jolani promotes democracy via elections, excluding a third of Syrians.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported in an article titled “One-third of Syrians were not in the first elections; Al-Sharaa created a model of democracy.” Yesterday, the Syrian parliamentary elections were held to elect two-thirds of the 250-member parliament, while “Ahmad Al-Sharaa,” nicknamed “Abu Muhammad Al-Julani,” the interim president of the Syrian transitional period, appointed one-third of the remaining representatives, and one-third of the people were effectively excluded from the election process.
The elections are being held according to a mechanism in which the Syrian people do not participate directly and are only waiting for the results. This election method is in line with the balances that the new government, which controls less than two-thirds of the country’s territory, is seeking to create. The elections, which lasted several hours, were held in areas under the control of the transitional authorities through voting, which was organized by “electoral boards” appointed by the transitional authorities.
The Syrian parliamentary elections were not held in the Kurdish-controlled areas or in the autonomous province of Sweida, although the area of these two regions is close to one-third of Syria’s territory.
The election, the first since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, was heavily publicized, especially after the candidacy of Henry Hamra, the first Syrian-American Jew to run in Syria since 1967, as Jews were barred from holding public office in Syria.
As the voting process began, which ended within hours, the “High Election Commission” appointed by al-Sharaa announced that the elections would be held in fifty constituencies in different provinces of Syria. 1,578 candidates – approximately 14 percent of the total are women – would compete for 140 seats. They would be selected by approximately 14,000 members of the electoral commission who had been appointed in advance.
Al-Sharaa described the holding of the elections as historic, declaring that Syria had moved from a phase of war and chaos to an electoral atmosphere that reflected a spirit of participation.