Syrian election results 'ensure Al Shara's grip on power'

Only a handful of minorities among 140 newly elected parliamentarians

Syrian authorities declared the winners on Monday of an invitation-only parliamentary election, consolidating their political ascendancy since the overthrow of former president Bashar Al Assad last year.

The Election Commission for the People’s Assembly, appointed by President Ahmad Al Shara in June, declared names of the 140 winners in 50 electoral districts after ballots were cast on Sunday.

Among them were half a dozen members of the myriad religious minorities in the country, while the rest are overwhelmingly religious conservatives, according to observers. The declared names suggest only six of the 140 new deputies are women.

Nawar Nijmeh, a spokesman for the commission, told reporters that the representation of women “did not rise to their position in Syrian society”, although in some districts 30 per cent of the voters were women. He said there were only two Christians elected, which he attributed to electoral “tactics and alliances”.

“Counting of the votes was conducted openly, in some districts witnessed by foreign ambassadors,” a commission official told The National. They declined to comment on the affiliations of the winners.

About 6,000 voters were chosen by Election Commission and 1,578 of them had declared themselves candidates for 140 seats. No parties ran and there were no election campaigns or manifestos. Mr Al Shara will directly appoint the remaining members of the 210-seat legislature over the next week.

Mohamed Zuaiter, a veteran Alawite politician, said the Syrian election represents an “overwhelming win of religious and tribal candidates over the civil component of Syria”. Mr Zuaiter opposed Al Assad family rule and spent years as a political prisoner.

He said Mr Al Shara could change the balance in favour of more minorities when he names the remaining parliamentarians but the legislature will remain loyalist.

”The President has ensured his grip over the political future of Syria,” Mr Zuaiter said, pointing out that a new constitution will be drawn up and parliament will enact a host of new laws.

Candidates attend a count in the coastal city of Latakia on Sunday. AP

Mr Al Shara's Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) group, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, toppled the previous regime in December, ending six decades of Alawite-dominated rule over majority-Sunni Syria.

Previous parliaments since Syria’s independence in 1946, bar a bout of democracy in the 1950s, were rubber-stamp legislatures.

Bashar Al Assad and his father Hafez, both Alawites, used parliament to reward loyalty and as part of social engineering that resulted in new tribal leaders and a class of Sunni merchants who supported the regime, as well as the Alawites who underpinned the security forces. The Al Assads also placated the Christian clergy and other religious leaderships.

In the previous Syrian parliament, elected last year under the old regime, about a quarter of members were Alawites, Christians, Ismailis or from other religious groups, while the rest were Sunnis. Religious minorities formed about 15 per cent of the country’s 22 million population before the 2011 civil war.

During a visit to an election centre in Damascus on Sunday, Mr Al Shara said the poll suited “the phase Syria is undergoing”. He described it as part of a transition in which Syria needed a parliament to pass legal reforms and government budgets.

The elections excluded parts of eastern Syria, where there is a significant concentration of Kurds, and the mostly Druze governorate of Sweida. The authorities have not been able to quell resistance to the new order in these two areas.