Uncertainty remains for Christians in Syria following dubious elections which saw President Ahmed al-Sharaa strengthen his control of the nation’s government, with next to no representation for believers.
The new Hay’at Tahir al-Sham (HTS) regime, led by al-Sharaa has worked to project a credible image of stability and governance since it overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s brutal government at the end of last year.
However, it has yet to prove that it will provide greater protection for the country’s 300,000 or so Christians, and these elections will do little to quell their fears, with the electoral process appearing to be less than above board, and only two of the 210 members elected to the People’s Assembly being Christians, representing less than one per cent of the parliament.
It is widely reported that President al-Sharaa personally appointed 70 of the 210 members of the People’s Assembly, but Martin Parsons, of the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution, told en about the full extent of his control over the process.
He said: “[President al-Sharaa] also appoints the 11 members of a national committee, which then appoints 140 local sub-committees, who then chose 30-50 ‘influential’ local people to vote for the remaining 140 members of the National Assembly.
“The whole process is pretty well totally under the control of President al-Sharaa who will seek to ensure that he doesn’t have any significant opposition to his plans to impose an Islamist constitution on Syria.
“As presidential decrees can only be overturned by a two-thirds majority in parliament and al-Sharaa personally appoints a third of the seats, he already has almost total control anyway.”
Asked how the results are likely to affect Christians, Parsons was not optimistic, due to such little parliamentary representation, alongside the exclusion of north-eastern regions from the voting process, where many of Syria’s Christians live, on the pretence of “security concerns” despite the area’s relative stability.
He said: “The bottom line is that President al-Sharaa is intent on turning Syria into a radical Islamist state. Whatever fig leaf these so-called elections provide for his intentions, no one should be in any doubt that they will almost certainly mean persecution of Christians in the future.”
