Syrian President Al Assad reshuffles Baath party command before July parliamentary election
Syria will hold its next parliamentary election in mid-July, state media reported.
The decision comes after President Bashar Al Assad made changes to the ruling Baath party command amid a deteriorating economy and a civil war in its second decade.
The 250-member People’s Assembly, which serves fouryear terms, is a rubber-stamp legislature that has been controlled by the Baath party since it seized power in a 1963 coup.
Since the civil war began in 2011, the election has been viewed as a barometer of influence among the ruling elite.
These include new players in the war economy and militias that now support the system, along with the security apparatus dominated by members of the Alawite minority, to which Mr Al Assad belongs. The official news agency, Sana, on Saturday, reported the President had signed a decree setting July 15 as the date for the election.
The authorities have maintained decades-long regulations that in effect allocate two-thirds of the seats to the Baath party and the National Progressive Front, a largely inactive coalition of loyalist political groups led by the Baath.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a Syrian political commentator, said that the election this year was set up to bring in a new “flavour” to revitalise the Baath party.
Mr Abdel Nour said Mr Al Assad had signalled to the security agencies not to interfere in the party’s internal election that resulted in new faces in its leadership this month, although the President retained the post of Secretary General.
“He wanted to find out the currents within his base and the best way to do that was to let them compete,” said Mr Abdel Nour. The new party leadership are now mostly in their 50s, considerably younger than their predecessors, he said.
Among them is Ziad Ghuson, a journalist with a record of criticising the government.
Mr Abdel Nour said the Baathists are now also expecting more leeway in running for the parliamentary seats reserved for them and their allies, which could entice more people to stand. There are about 1.5 million Baath party members in Syria, out of about 20 million people in the country.
Two thirds live in areas held by the Damascus government while the rest live in eastern areas under the control of Kurdish militias supported by the US, in the north under Sunni Arab militias supported by Turkey, and in the north-west, under an offshoot of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which has channels with Ankara.
The turnout in the previous parliamentary election in July 2020 was 37 per cent, down from 57 per cent in 2016, according to government figures.
In the 2020 election, the Baath party primaries “were marked by limited participation, accusations of corruption and widespread objections”, according to a report by the European University Institute in Florence.