Syria holds first multiparty parliamentary elections in decades

Polls open in Syria Residents of Syria\'s northwestern Idlib province reported gunfire and explosions and in the city of Hama rebels and soldiers clashed early on Monday, the  British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
At least six people were killed Monday, including two people in the Damascus suburbs and one in Idlib, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition group.
The Observatory said at least two civilians were killed in Idlib, one in Hama and another in Homs.
In the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, three dissidents were killed in a dawn raid by government troops, the Observatory added. |
Syria on Monday began what the government is calling the first multi-party elections in five decades as polling stations opened across the country on Monday.
The opposition has dismissed the vote as a sham and said it will boycott the vote for the 250-seat parliament.
Critics have said it will fail to bring change to the strife-torn country reeling under the effects of a pro-democracy uprising that is facing a bloody crackdown from the government.
The UN says that more than 9000 people have been killed during president Bashar al-Assad\'s suppression of the rebellion.
The vote, initially scheduled for September 2011, was postponed to May 7 after Assad announced the launch of a reform process.
The elections come three months after the adoption of a new constitution that allows the formation of political parties to compete with the president\'s governing Baath party and limits the president to two seven-year terms.
Nine parties have been created, and seven have candidates competing for a parliamentary seat.
Pro-regime parties led by the Baath Party are represented under a coalition called the National Progressive Front.
A total of 7195 candidates have registered to stand for the 250 seats, state news agency SANA said.
\"By taking part in the election, Syrians are defying the campaign of terrorism and aggression led by international and regional parties implicated in a terrorist war against our country,\" Syria’s information minister Adnan Mahmoud had stated earlier.
Political specialists, however, believe the elections will not make any significant political changes in Syria, where a tenuous UN.-backed ceasefire that came into effect April 12 has failed to take hold.
“The elections are a step in a void and will not lead to any change in the political landscape and security of Syria,” Oraib al-Rantawi, director of the Amman-based al-Quds Centre for Political Studies, told AFP.
It is taking place “amid a lack of security, continued killings and violence... while (many) are detained, suffering or displaced,” Rantawi said, dismissing the elections as “media propaganda.”
Bashar al-Haraki, a member of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the principal opposition coalition, said the elections were a \"farce which can be added to the regime\'s masquerade\".
Violence has continued in Syria despite a ceasefire between government and the opposition forces which forms part of a peace plan mediated by the UN and Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan.
The army still has tanks and heavy weapons in cities and towns across the country and rebels are continuing their attacks on military convoys and army roadblocks that have cut off swathes of the country.
Unrest raging across the country since mid-March 2011 that has claimed more than 11,100 lives, mostly civilians, according to the British-based Observatory.
Syrian authorities have repeatedly blamed the violence on “armed terrorist groups” and outside parties.
Monday’s vote also comes as UN observers are deployed in Syria to monitor a tenuous ceasefire, in place since April 12, and as deadly violence continues to rock the country.
Unlike autocratic leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen who were toppled by the Arab Spring, Assad has kept enough support among the military and his Alawite sect, which dominates the army and security apparatus, to withstand the revolt.
Since succeeding his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000, Assad has relied on a pliant parliament to rubber-stamp the will of the ruling family in the majority Sunni Muslim country.
The assembly currently does not have a single opposition member and official media said half the seats would be reserved for “representatives of workers and peasants,” whose unions are controlled by Assad’s Baath Party, according to Reuters.
Election posters, mostly of staunchly pro-Assad candidates, hung in central Damascus and regions where Assad still retains strong authority, but there were fewer in outlying areas that form the bedrock of the revolt.
“What happened last year has made people realize that we really need a real parliament that will be a direct channel ... and has an effective role in building a new stage,” said Maria Saadeh, an engineer who is running for a Damascus seat.
Independent politician Qadri Jameel said he was running “because we believe we can turn the election into a starting point of a political process, and to decrease the level of violence so as to reach dialogue.”
Bassam Ishaq, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament in 2003 and 2007 and fled the country last year, said the vote would change little.
“Syria’s political system remains utterly corrupt and election results will be again determined in advance,” he said. “There are effectively very few seats for independents, and these will go to the highest bidder.”
Interior minister Mohammad Nidal al-Shaar toured the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, and declared Syria’s commercial and industrial hub was ready for the vote.
The authorities say there are 14 million eligible voters, including expatriates, and 7,195 candidates.
In the Sunni Muslim town of Madaya, a rural centre of the revolt 30 km (20 miles) north of Damascus, there was no sign of an election campaign. In the nearby town of Zabadani, just a few pictures of one candidate.