Syria
A Syrian man walks past election campaign posters after voting in the country's legislative election at a polling station in Damascus on July 15, 2024. Photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The newly-elected Syrian legislature does not have a Kurdish representative despite President Bashar al-Assad’s claim that the parliamentary vote was part of a transitional stage in the country.
Monday’s parliamentary election was conducted in regime-held areas on Monday. Assad told reporters after casting his ballot that “all the hopes would be put on the People’s Assembly,” but a Kurdish academic said the parliament lacks Kurdish representation.
Fareed Saadun told Rudaw that out of the 14 victorious candidates in Hasaka province only one is Kurdish; however, “he does not consider himself as a Kurd.”
“Over 75 percent of the MPs will be affiliated with the Baath party,” he added, doubting there will be any political change in the country; although, “the regime has begun a new phase which they say aims at changing traditional policy and building a new Syria.”
“We cannot go smoothly during this stage and these difficult circumstances in Syria, the region and in the world if there was no national dialogue,” Assad told reporters. “The People’s Assembly is the most important institution for national dialogue, if you return to the rule of procedures… it would manage this process, process of dialogue, a dialogue within the Assembly.”
With the results of the election, Assad’s Baath party is expected to remain in power.
The election was calm in most parts of regime-held provinces, but there were protests in Sweida where the Druze minority group has been protesting against economic conditions for almost a year.
Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria had banned campaigning for the Syrian parliamentary election.
Abadulrahman Khalil is a Kurdish politician. He was a member of the Syrian parliament on the ticket of the Syrian Communist Party in the previous term. He was arrested by the Kurdish forces in Qamishli last Wednesday while promoting himself and his party. He failed to maintain his seat at the legislature.
He has since been released.
“One party [armed group] stopped me near a street. I was with my friends. They took us in a very improper way in Qamishli,” Khalil told Rudaw on Wednesday.
“The reason was that they had banned election campaigning. They said that I had to sign a paper, promising not to continue the campaign. I told them that I could not give up my party’s ideology and that I had not attacked anyone,” he noted.
He said his party informed the regime authorities but they were not helpful.
“It is our duty to defend our people and region,” he said.
The politician also said that his party has no contact with the Democratic Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (DAANES), which is led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political arm of the People’s Defense Units (YPG).
“We have no communication with the so-called autonomous administration,” he said.
Dilbxwin Dara and Hussein Omar contributed to this article.
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