On Sunday, October 5, 2025, Syrians witnessed a moment that, for many, felt both historic and fraught with uncertainty: the country’s first parliamentary elections since the dramatic ouster of Bashar al-Assad ten months earlier. The vote, orchestrated under the watch of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, was billed by some as a step toward democracy after decades of iron-fisted rule. Yet, for others, it was a stark reminder of the formidable challenges still facing a nation battered by civil war, displacement, and deep-seated mistrust.
How did this election unfold, and what does it mean for Syria’s battered political landscape? According to AP and BBC, the election did not follow the popular vote model familiar to most democracies. Instead, a complex system of electoral colleges—comprising about 6,000 members selected from 50 districts—chose representatives for two-thirds of the 210-seat People’s Assembly. The remaining one-third, some 70 seats, were directly appointed by President al-Sharaa, a move that immediately raised eyebrows among critics who warned about the risk of executive overreach.
The mechanics of the vote were shaped by the country’s ongoing instability. As reported by BBC, the interim authorities cited the impossibility of holding a nationwide popular vote, given that millions of Syrians remain displaced or lack essential documents. “As a transitional period, there is a difficulty to hold popular elections due to the loss of documents, and half of the population is outside of Syria, also without documents,” al-Sharaa explained in a televised interview. The government’s solution was to create electoral colleges in each district, whose members would then select parliamentary candidates from among themselves. All candidates, therefore, had to be part of these colleges, and no political parties were permitted to register, as the previous party system had been dissolved after Assad’s fall.
But even this workaround was not possible everywhere. Elections were indefinitely postponed in three key regions: Raqqa and Hassakeh in the northeast—areas largely controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces—and the southern province of Sweida, where recent sectarian violence between Druze militias and Sunni Bedouin tribes left more than 1,000 dead, most of them Druze. As a result, 20 seats allocated to these regions will remain vacant until security and political conditions allow for voting to take place.
The exclusion of these regions has not gone unnoticed. Thouraya Mustafa of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) told Reuters, “We see exclusion and denial of the rights of the Syrian people, such as elections. Therefore, the Syrian interim government does not represent the will of the Syrian people.” The government’s inability to reconcile with the Kurdish-led administration in the northeast—despite earlier negotiations to integrate military and civilian institutions—has left a significant portion of the population feeling sidelined.
Meanwhile, the process for selecting members of the electoral colleges and, by extension, candidates, has come under scrutiny. Haid Haid, a senior research fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative, flagged the lack of transparency and oversight in how electors were chosen. “Especially when it comes to choosing the subcommittees and the electoral colleges, there is no oversight, and the whole process is sort of potentially vulnerable to manipulation,” he told AP. This suspicion was echoed by a coalition of Syrian civil society groups, who warned in a joint statement that the president’s direct and indirect influence over both the Higher Committee for the Syrian People’s Assembly Elections and the electoral colleges “rendered the elections symbolic at best, devoid of their democratic purpose of ensuring representation and accountability.”
For many ordinary Syrians, the process felt distant and opaque. Hussam Nasreddin, a resident of a predominantly Druze suburb of Damascus, described the elections as “more like an appointment.” He told Reuters, “The People’s Assembly should be elected by the people and it should represent the people. Today we don’t know anything. We did not see any lists or representatives. We didn’t see anything.”
Inclusivity was another contentious issue. While women were required to make up at least 20% of electoral college members, they constituted only 14% of the 1,578 final candidates, according to the state-run SANA news agency. Some districts had as many as 40% female candidates, while others had none. There were no quotas for religious or ethnic minorities, though the government did draw some minority-majority districts to avoid diluting their representation. Still, the lack of set quotas and the exclusion of entire regions with significant minority populations continued to fuel concerns about the parliament’s legitimacy.
Supporters of the process, however, argued that the electoral system was the best option under the circumstances. Abdullah El-Hafi, director of the Local Administration Councils Unit, told The New York Times, “Of course, we would all hope for open elections. But the country lacks much of the infrastructure needed to hold them, like unified civil registries or even voting laws.” He pointed to similar models used in other transitional countries, noting, “It is not the ideal situation, but it is the situation that is possible now.”
For some, the election represented a small but significant step forward. Sumaya Hilal, a pharmacist from Damascus and a member of an electoral council, reflected on the moment: “Here we are, on the verge of laying the first foundation for building a state of law. We dreamed of voting for whomever we wanted. It is a great responsibility, and our consolation is that the Syrians are determined to succeed.”
Yet, skepticism lingers about the true independence and authority of the new parliament. As Samy Akil of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy observed, “It’s a process of rubber-stamping and projecting legitimacy, at least internally.” With President al-Sharaa directly appointing a third of the assembly, many fear the parliament will serve more as a tool for consolidating power than as a genuine check on the executive branch.
The interim constitution, announced in March, preserves a strong presidential system and grants al-Sharaa sweeping powers, including the authority to appoint Supreme Court judges and a third of parliament’s members. His cabinet, which includes a handful of minority representatives and one woman, is dominated by loyalists from his years as a rebel leader. This concentration of power, coupled with the exclusion of key regions and communities, has deepened mistrust among Syria’s Kurds, Christians, Alawites, and Druze.
Despite these challenges, the elections mark a turning point in Syria’s long and painful transition. Whether this experiment in limited parliamentary democracy can evolve into a more inclusive and representative system remains to be seen. For now, Syrians are left to navigate the uncertain path between hope and skepticism, with the eyes of the world watching closely as the country attempts to rebuild its institutions from the ruins of war.
