Syria’s government accused the Kurdish-led administration in the northeast of bearing “full responsibility” for preventing parliamentary elections from taking place in the Raqqa and Hasaka provinces, effectively excluding residents there from the upcoming vote.
Nawar Najmeh, a member of Syria’s Higher Judicial Committee for Elections, told Asharq al-Awsat the autonomous administration’s appeal to the international community not to recognize the polls was an attempt to shift blame.
He said the committee had made repeated efforts to visit Raqqa and Hasaka to prepare for the vote but had been unable to do so due to “political and security conditions.”
“Elections are a sovereign matter that require fairness, justice and transparency, which are absent under the control of armed forces that confiscate citizens’ political will,” Najmeh said.
The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, which governs areas outside Damascus’s control, urged the United Nations and foreign governments last week not to recognize the elections, calling them a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254 on a political settlement to the Syrian conflict.
It rejected what it described as unilateral decisions imposed by Damascus and said it would not implement them.
On Saturday, Syria’s election committee said voting in Raqqa, Hasaka and Sweida would be postponed until “suitable and safe conditions” are available, while keeping their parliamentary seat quotas reserved.
The autonomous administration denounced the delay as further proof that the elections were “undemocratic” and “excluded nearly half of Syrians”. It dismissed Damascus’s claim that the northeast was unsafe, saying its territory was more stable than many other parts of the country.
The dispute highlights faltering negotiations between the government and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
A member of the opposition negotiating body, Sanharib Barsoum, said the talks stalled because Damascus sought to dismantle the administration’s civilian and military institutions, while Kurdish leaders wanted them tied to parallel state institutions without being dissolved.
Despite security challenges across the country, Damascus is pressing ahead with preparations for the vote in mid-September.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa approved a temporary electoral law under which two-thirds of the 210-member assembly will be elected by local bodies, while the rest will be appointed by presidential decree.
Candidates must hold Syrian nationality from before May 2011, must not have stood for president or parliament after that date unless they defected, and must not be linked to the former regime or terrorist groups, according to the decree.
