Parliamentary elections were scheduled to be held in Syria on 13 April 2020 to elect members of the People's Council of Syria. However, on 14 March they were postponed to 20 May due to the coronavirus pandemic. On 7 May, it was decided to postpone the elections until 19 July. Syria's parliamentary elections occur every four years, with the last held in 2016. A total of 1,656 candidates ran for office, competing for all 250 seats in Syria's parliament.
Background
The previous parliamentary election was held on 13 April 2016, although its results were not recognized by the United Nations. On 3 March 2020, President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree setting the date of the election to 13 April 2020. The decree stipulated that 127 of the 250 members of the People's Council were to be workers and farmers, while 123 were to be from other segments of the population. All were to be elected from 15 multi-member constituencies. The announcement came amid a government offensive on Idlib Governorate, the last province mainly controlled by the Syrian opposition. The opposition Syrian National Coalition called the election a "theatrical election by the Assad regime" with millions uprooted or in exile.
Electoral system
The 250 seats of the People's Council of Syria are elected through general tickets in 15 multi-member constituencies. Voters in a riding choose a closed list of candidates that they cannot change from the proposed ones, and the one with the most votes wins all the seats at stake in the riding. Each list is made up of a minimum of two-thirds of Ba'ath Party candidates and half of workers and peasants, so that the total of the latter is 127 out of the total of 250 elected deputies. In practice, committees appointed by a commission whose members are themselves chosen by the president decide on the validity of the candidacies of "workers and peasants," meaning the president has de facto control over who is allowed to run under that designation, and political parties other than the ruling Ba'ath Party are prohibited from criticising the national government or the Ba'ath Party under a ban on "weakening national sentiment". All members of the National Progressive Front are also loyal to the Ba'ath Party.
Conduct
The electoral process was accessible to Syrians living in all areas held by the Syrian government, as well as those under joint government-SDF control, which is around 70% of the country's total territory. This made the 2020 election the first time since the beginning of the country's civil war in which a government-sponsored election was held in the provinces of Raqqa, Al-Hasakah and the government-controlled parts of Idlib. Previously, the armed groups that controlled those areas did not allow the Syrian Government to organize elections within them. However, the SDF did not allow the election to take place in areas under its exclusive rule, as they see an election prior to dialogue and agreement on a solution to the end of the civil war as premature. The country's electoral authorities stated that the elections were fair, noting that candidates, their representatives and the media would be allowed to monitor the voting and vote counting process. The Syrian Opposition and armed rebel groups within it, which don't recognize the government at all, rejected the election completely and refused to take part in it, leaving the ruling coalition to face very little opposition at the polls. As the election was held during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, voters had their temperature checked before being allowed into the voting premises, while election officials were required to wear masks and ensure that queues of voters observed social distancing. Unkown individuals detonated a bomb inside a polling center in Busra al-Harir on election day, coinciding with two other bombings in the Syrian capital of Damascus, which detonated near a mosque in the Naher Aisha neighbourhood and killed at least one person.
Results
Results were delayed as they had to be re-run in 5 of the over 7,000 total voting districts. Voting was held in 70% of Syrian territory. The nationwide turnout for the election was 33.17%, as 6,224,687 voters voted in the election. This represented a decline in turnout, which the Syrian government attributed to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Syria. Observers concurred that the deadly pandemic had significantly affected turnout, but added that the news of the election day bombings, wartime poverty and a lack of confidence in the ability of the parliament to end the crisis that had beset Syria since the start of the country's civil war were also major contributing factors to the low turnout. The pro-government National Progressive Front and its allies won 177 of the 250 seats. Three Armenians were elected to the People's Council, an increase of one compared with the previous elections.
