First results for Syria's new parliament show low share for minorities, women

Highlights:

• First parliament after overthrow of Bashar al-Assad
• Start of process to pick nearly two-thirds of 210-seat body
• Sharaa's selection of remaining share could address women, minority gaps, official says

Syria on Monday published preliminary results of its indirect vote for the first parliament since Bashar al-Assad's historic toppling last year, with election officials acknowledging a low success rate for women and religious minorities.

Sunday's vote saw around 6,000 members of regional electoral colleges choose candidates from pre-approved lists, part of a process to produce nearly two-thirds of the new 210-seat body. President Ahmed al-Sharaa will later select the remaining third.

In the days preceding the vote, analysts and some Syrians had voiced concerns that it was too centrally managed and that suspending elections in areas outside government control meant not all communities were being fairly represented.

In preliminary results issued on Monday, Syria's electoral committee said that 119 lawmakers had been selected but did not include the number of votes each received.

CONCERNS OVER REPRESENTATION, SHORT APPEALS WINDOW

Six new lawmakers are women, according to a Reuters count verified by election observers. The observers said 10 seats in total went to religious and ethnic minorities, including Kurds, Christians and two Alawites, the sect to which Assad belongs.

One of the election observers described the new parliament as overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and male.

Nawar Najma, spokesperson for Syria's higher electoral committee, was asked at a press conference specifically about representation of women and Christians.

"Among the most significant shortcomings of the electoral process were the unsatisfactory results for Syrian women's representation, and the fact that Christian representation was limited to two seats, a weak representation relative to the number of Christians in Syria," he said.

Najma said he believed that Sharaa would try to address any shortcomings in his own appointment of the remaining 70 lawmakers.

The authorities say they resorted to an indirect system rather than universal suffrage due to a lack of reliable population data following the war, which killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and displaced millions.

Citing security and political reasons, authorities postponed the vote in areas outside government control, including Kurdish-held parts of Syria's north and northeast, as well as the province of Sweida, held by the Druze minority.

The postponements left 21 seats empty.

Najma told reporters that holding elections in Kurdish-held zones was linked to progress in negotiations to integrate those areas - including the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces - into the Damascus-run state apparatus.

Authorities remain "serious" about holding subsequent elections in those zones, he said.

Parliament was slightly larger under Assad, with 250 seats of which two-thirds were reserved for members of his Baath Party. The last elections in July 2024 were labeled a farce by Assad's opponents.

Female representation in parliament was also low under Assad and his father Hafez before him. Women lawmakers made up only 6% to 13% of the legislature from 1981 until Bashar al-Assad was toppled, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which collects data on national parliaments worldwide.