• Only 119 candidates out of 140 were elected through the ballot box, 21 seats remain vacant in the governorates of Suwayda, Raqqa, and Hasakah due to ‘security reasons’

ISTANBUL

Syria’s electoral authority announced on Monday the official results of the country’s first parliamentary elections since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Nawar Najmeh, a spokesman of the Higher Committee for People’s Assembly Elections, told a press conference in Damascus that the results for two-thirds of the seats in the People’s Assembly, or parliament, are final and not subject to appeal.

President Ahmad al-Sharaa will appoint the remaining third of the seats, he said, adding: “This process is unrelated to the electoral bodies.”

Najmeh said: “Every elected MP represents all Syrians regardless of affiliation.”

He stressed that the new parliament is expected to be “critical and revolutionary, supporting and monitoring government performance.”

Najmeh noted that 4% of the seats were allocated to people with disabilities and those wounded during the 13-year uprising against the Assad regime.

He acknowledged shortcomings, including “unsatisfactory representation of Syrian women” and “weak Christian representation, with only two seats in comparison to the community’s size.”

He described the elections as fair and transparent but admitted that population data limitations in some regions affected seat distribution.

He added that Sharaa is expected to address these imbalances when appointing the remaining one-third of assembly members.

Other governorates

Later, Committee Chair Mohammad Taha al-Ahmad told a separate press conference that “what we need are capable individuals, not sectarian quotas,” announcing that 119 candidates were elected through the ballot box.

Twenty-one seats remain vacant in the governorates of Suwayda and Raqqa in northeastern Syria plus Hasakah in the south.

The electoral committee will meet Tuesday, Najmeh said, to discuss the mechanism for holding elections in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqa, and Suwayda. He noted that the expected timing for holding the elections is the same as the timeline for implementing the March 10 agreement.

On March 10, the Syrian presidency announced an agreement to integrate the SDF into state institutions, stressing the country’s territorial integrity and rejecting any separatist designs.

The SDF is dominated by the terrorist group YPG, the Syrian branch of the terrorist PKK.

Suwayda has observed a ceasefire since July 19, following a week of armed clashes between Druze groups and Bedouin tribes and Israeli military attacks.

On Sunday, Syria held an indirect election for its People’s Assembly, the first since the ouster of the Assad regime. Some 6,000 voters were selected from electoral bodies across the country to cast ballots to elect two-thirds of the 210-seat body.

Under the new transitional system, 140 seats were contested through these indirect votes; the president is set to appoint the remaining 70 members.