Syria - 2007 Election
Presidential, parliamentary, and local elections took place in 2007. Syrians seemed largely unaware or interested in the elections because they had little faith that representatives will ensure that future legislation takes into account their interests. In a startling official expression of the sad state of electoral politics, an article in an official Syrian newspaper, Al-Thawra, reported that Syrians are not interested in running or voting in parliamentary (or municipal elections) because government institutions do not play their constitutional roles, due to individual incompetence or greed but also because many legislative members "awaited instructions from the parties that nominated them and did not take the initiative." The author urged the need for leaders of the officially-sanctioned National Progressive Front (NPF) to nominate the most qualified candidates for office.
Actually, as is usually the case with quasi-sanctioned political and economic criticism in Syria, the critic emphasizes the least important aspects of the problem. He focuses on issues attributable to personal foibles, rather than to systemic problems or to the role of the regime itself, distracting readers from the underlying problems linked to lack of freedom and regime-emasculated institutions. Nevertheless, Thawra is an official organ and the fact of the criticism is interesting.
About 12 million Syrians were eligible to vote (including Syrian expatriates who would have to return to Syria to cast a ballot), and about 7.6 million election cards had been issued as of late April. Citizens eligible to vote could obtain election cards throughout the voting process. By law, voters were allowed to cast a ballot in any polling place in Syria for candidates in that area so, theoretically, a group of voters from Damascus could legally travel to another part of the country to influence polling results there.
Official Syrian news outlets claimed overall high voter turnout. For example, a news story by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported in its lead: "Citizens throughout all Syrian cities, towns and villages flocked to the polling stations to exercise their right to elect their representatives to the 9th legislative term of the Peoples Assembly." Visits by US and other diplomatic observers to polling places in the Syrian capital and small surrounding cities suggested low voter turnout during the 1.5-day balloting for the People's Assembly.
The government barred international election monitors from entering the country to observe the elections. Local and international human rights advocates judged all three elections as neither free nor fair and stated that they served to reassert the primacy and political monopoly of power Asad and the Ba'ath Party apparatus wielded. Although some opposition groups estimated voter turnout in the presidential election at significantly less than 50 percent, the government's official statistics reported voter turnout to be 96 percent, and President Asad reportedly won 98 percent of the vote. Outside observers uniformly dismissed the voter statistics as fraudulent and not representative of observed participation. Past elections showed that NPF parties, which includes and is headed by the official Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, always control the 167 seats needed for absolute majority of the 250-member Parliament, while non-NPF, "independent" candidates hold up to 83 legislative seats. The NPF is a coalition of nine officially sanctioned parties.
All parties in the Syrian opposition boycotted the elections, including the Kurdish Future Movement, which dropped out days before balloting, citing an inability to develop a full slate of candidates. The Damascus Declaration group, the heart of the opposition, decided in March after extensive internal conversations to boycott these elections, believing that any participation allowed to it in a such a show enterprise would only lend the regime legitimacy.
The previous constitution provided that the Ba'ath Party is the ruling party and ensures that it has a majority in all government and popular associations, such as workers' and women's groups. Women and minorities generally participated in the political system without formal restriction. During the year a female vice president and three female cabinet ministers were in office. Thirty of the 250 ministers of parliament were women. In addition, the president had two high-ranking female advisors.
There was one Druze and one Kurdish minister in the parliament. Alawites, the ruling religious minority, held a large percentage of cabinet and parliamentary seats. According to human rights observers, ethnic and religious minorities outside the Alawite and Christian communities claimed they had no genuine representation in the government and that minority representatives were often more responsive to the ruling party than to their minority constituencies.
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