2006-05-05 00:00:00 : Syria > Politics

“Syria: committee to formulate a modern election law”

As Safir, an independent newspaper, reported in its May 5 issue about the latest developments on the Syrian political scene. The newspaper wrote: “As Safir learned yesterday that the Syrian people’s council [Syrian parliament] formed a committee of eight members in order to formulate a new law regulating legislative elections in Syria. Sources in the people’s council told As Safir that [speaker] Mohammad Al-Abrash gave the committee a period till the end of May to announce the results of its labors. They added that the decision to set up the committee included ‘creating a new modern law that suits the demands of the new period in Syria’ especially as the mandate of the current council ends in March 2007. Syrian political party sources told As Safir that the one month deadline was not ‘odd’ especially as the subject ‘had been discussed previously in the central leadership of the progressive national front with the parties in the front submitting their suggestions to the executive authority’.” The newspaper continued: “The legal expert for the Syrian communist party Faez Jalajeh told As Safir that the most important remarks issued by his party on the old law was that it was ‘classic from the year 1976 and thus old and does not befit the changes that took place in the last few decades’ and added that the second remark was that it ‘allowed the executive authority full supervision over the elections’. Jalajeh declared that ‘this is not allowable especially if some wanted the elections to change this authority’. He added that the current law ‘depends on the majority system within the provinces’ and that is why the communist party suggested that this system be changed to use ‘proportionality, with the whole country becoming a single electoral province instead of the provinces’ and the ‘formation of an independent committee of judges and neutral personalities to supervise the elections until the results were announced’…” - As-Safir, Lebanon

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