A Parliament by Design, Not by Vote

The new People’s Assembly is not a revolution’s reward, but its redesign, and a window into al-Sharaa’s vision for a conservative, market-driven Syria.

I won’t rush to judge Syria’s new parliamentary “elections.” From the outset, it was made clear they would not be democratic. The electoral code left little room for illusion: committees appointed by President Ahmad al-Sharaa selected an electoral college, some of whose members could nominate themselves as candidates while the rest would vote. No one outside this circle was allowed to run or participate. The outcome of this process will form the new People’s Assembly—though how representative of “the people” it truly is remains to be seen.

President al-Sharaa appointed an electoral committee drawn from diverse backgrounds, which in turn formed subcommittees of three members each representing one of Syria’s governorates. Over several weeks, these subcommittees consulted with local communities and civic figures to identify members of a 6,000-strong Electoral College. Out of those 6,000 electors, 1,578 chose to run as candidates across fifty electoral districts. Elections were not held in the two northeastern governorates controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)— a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led coalition—or in Sweida, where militias loyal to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, the leading spiritual figure of Syria’s Druze community, remain in control. As a result, only 119 seats were filled, while 21 remain vacant—for a total of 140 seats meant to be chosen through this process. The remaining 70 seats of the 210-member assembly are to be filled by direct appointment from President al-Sharaa.

The authorities justified the absence of open, general elections on practical grounds: the country’s fragile security situation, the displacement of millions, and the lack of proper documentation for many citizens inside and outside Syria. There is a point to that—such obstacles are real and formidable. But the system adopted also allows for a tighter grip on outcomes, a degree of predictability that seems fully in keeping with the current leadership’s modus operandi.

Women accounted for roughly 14 percent of all candidates, and six—just over 4 percent of the 119 elected members—ultimately won seats. Among them are a Kurdish activist from Afrin, a Christian woman from Safita, an Alawite from Dreikish, a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer from Homs City, and a young human-rights advocate from Hama City. The major urban, and ostensibly more socially liberal, centers of Damascus and Aleppo elected no women. Three Kurds, including the Afrin activist, were elected from the Afrin District in the northwest—all members of the Kurdish National Council, a political rival of the SDF. Four Alawites, four Turkmen, and three Ismailites were also elected, demonstrating a limited effort to reflect Syria’s sectarian and ethnic diversity within the emerging transitional framework.

In terms of composition and tone, the results can be read as a victory for the moderates and an early reflection of al-Sharaa’s influence over the transitional process. He personally formed the electoral committee and oversaw the appointment of its provincial subcommittees. We can see in this victory the first clear features of the conservative political movement now coalescing around him, and that he seems to be actively designing, libertarian in its economic outlook, socially conservative but moderate in tone, and politically pragmatic. It is, in essence, the same profile that has defined al-Sharaa and his closest advisers since the fall of Assad. Few extremists were elected, but that is precisely the point. The system al-Sharaa designed to shape the electoral college effectively sidelined many of them, and the elections themselves took care of most of the rest. Still, their exclusion may not come without cost: some localities could experience backlash in the form of protests, defiance of new laws and regulations passed by the People’s Assembly, and perhaps even sporadic violence by factions unwilling to be written out of the new order.

Back in February, I described the leadership of HTS, the Islamist movement from which both al-Sharaa and his foreign minister, Asaad Shaibani, emerged, in precisely these terms: politically pragmatic, socially conservative, and economically libertarian. Their embrace of capitalism and free-market principles has long been explicit, as al-Sharaa reaffirmed in a televised interview at the time, and Shaibani echoed in Davos. They have reiterated this orientation since in various interviews and declarations. What we are witnessing now is the translation of that worldview into institutional form and the tentative birth of a movement that seeks to marry market economics with social conservatism and political pragmatism.

Seen in that light, these elections were less a democratic milestone than a recalibration of power—a test of whether the post-Assad order could produce a working legislature without losing coherence or control. Al-Sharaa’s allies appear to have succeeded in keeping hardliners at bay, for now, while allowing just enough pluralism to lend the process a veneer of openness. The People’s Assembly that emerges from this experiment may not yet be democratic. Still, it will serve as a laboratory for the kind of governance al-Sharaa seems to envision: strong, conservative, and market-driven.

The final measure of that vision—and of his priorities, strategy, and worldview—will come with the appointment of the remaining seventy members of the People’s Assembly. Who he chooses will tell us far more than the electoral results themselves. If he fills those seats with technocrats, minority figures, women, and independent civic voices, it will signal a serious attempt at pluralism. If he fills them with loyalists and clerical conservatives, it will confirm that what Syria is witnessing is not so much a rebirth as a rebranding —the careful reinvention of the same old system under new management and terminology.

In the end, what matters is not that a parliament has been formed, but what kind of country it has been built to serve. For now, Syria’s new order looks less like a revolution fulfilled than a revolution redesigned. And perhaps that’s the best outcome for the current moment.

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