Ahed Al-Hindi
The election in Syria will take place on the 22nd of April.
The number of candidatures is 9665. The candidates will compete for 250 seats, of which 167 seats are reserved for the Bath Party and its alliances, and the other 83 for the so-called independents. The percentage of the population who voted last year was about 10%. Many people in Syria don’t vote, and this year, most of the opposition and activists have asked people to boycott the elections, meaning that the number of people who are going to vote will probably be even lower. In the following, we will present the opinion of some independent and opposition representatives.
Writer, human rights activist and politician Hasibah Abdulrahman said that the opposition has chosen to boycott these elections because of the absence of any real political process. At the same time she refers to the existence of two points of view within the opposition, one arguing that there is no point in participating in such mock elections as the Syrian elections, and the second supporting participation in the elections, whatever the outcome. She added that the fact that real actors are not allowed to participate, and the majority of seats are reserved for the Baath Party and its allies, diminishes the electoral process.
Assyrian writer and activist Suleiman Yosuf says that "the Assyrian and the Syrian Christians are not concerned with these elections for political and logical reasons." He wondered how the Syrian citizen could be motivated to vote in an election whose results have been given on before-hand, through the issuance of lists of candidates from the ruling Baath lists who will inevitably be the winners of the elections. He said that it is wrong to talk about the existence of elections in Syria, in the light of the lack of a democratic environment as well as the absence of a law that regulates and licenses political work, meaning that all political candidates risk being arrested for engaging in political work.
He said also that the basic and most important reason that makes Assyrian and Syrian voters in general care very little about the elections is the lack of any role or function of the Syrian Parliament in investigating the Government or in issuing the required legislations because of the nature of the Syrian political regime and the Baath Party’s monopoly on power.
Zaradsht Mouhamed, member of the Political Committee of the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria, lectured in a symposium in a suburb of the Qamishli city, saying that the reasons that led to the decision to boycott the elections are many, namely the fact that the election laws have not been changed despite the regime’s promises to do so; the existence of more than a quarter million Kurds people in Syria, deprived of their nationality and their right to participate in elections; the frequent but still unfulfilled promises by the regime to reform and establish new legalisation for political work; and finally the survival of Article VIII of the Constitution legitimising the continued Bath rule, the state of emergency and martial law and preventing a climate of democracy without which we cannot talk about true elections.
He also stressed that the Syrian elections are a pure formality and nothing but sham elections. Once a person puts his name on the Bath party’s list of candidates, he will automatically be a member of Parliament and receive congratulations for his victory.
Riad Al Turk, Secretary General of the opposition People's Party, states that there are several points that justify the opposition’s boycott of the elections, one of the being that history shows that democratic and fair elections are not possible under the current electoral law and under this Constitution. These laws grant the ruling Baath Party the power to be the leading political force of state and society, along with its allies in the Progressive National Front, and give the Baath Party the right to occupy more than the half of the seats in Parliament.
A number of formal independent members of Parlimant, such as Riad Seif and Mamoun Homsi, have been subjected to political pressure because of the views they have expressed in Parliament, and the fact that they have criticised the actions of the executive authority. The conflict escalated and both politicians were eventually sent to prison, despite the diplomatic immunity granted to both of them.
Abdullah Hocheh, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the opposition People's Party, says: The elections are supposed to be the way by which the people freely choose their Parliamentarian representatives to express and defend their interests and cases, but where is the freedom of choice when we live under a state of emergency, which deprive the people of all elements of freedom, including even the most basic freedom, the freedom of expression.
Hassan abd Alazim, official spokesman for the National Democratic Assembly, wrote a summary of the different attitudes to the election in an article in the AlArabi Bulletin titled Is there an election to vote in?
The lawyer Ragaa Nasser, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Democratic Arab Socialist Union Party, says: Because of this electoral law there is no freedom for opposition candidates. All election activities must be approved by the governor who is a member of the Baath Party at the governorate level, and posters and print ads must be approved by the security.
Journalist Modar Asad confirms that he will not boycott the elections, as some do, but at the same time he will not vote for anyone. He will put a blank piece of paper in the ballot box as a way of sending a message that none of the candidates have convinced him.
Comments