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Syria will select members of its first post-Assad parliament on Sunday in a process criticised as undemocratic, with a third of the members appointed by interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The assembly’s formation is set to consolidate the power of Sharaa, whose Islamist forces led a coalition that toppled long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad in December after more than 13 years of civil war and five decades of one-family rule.
According to the organising committee, more than 1,500 candidates – just 14 per cent of them women – are running for the assembly, which will have a renewable 30-month mandate.
Sharaa is to appoint 70 representatives out of the 210-member body.
The other two-thirds will be selected by local committees appointed by the electoral commission, which itself was appointed by Sharaa.
But southern Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida province, which suffered sectarian bloodshed in July, and the country’s Kurdish-held northeast are excluded from the process for now as they are outside Damascus’s control, and their 32 seats will remain empty.
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