Syria is preparing, next Sunday, to elect a new People's Assembly in an entitlement coinciding with the passage of 20 years since President Bashar Al-Assad took office, and he has spent about half of his term in the midst of a bloody conflict exacerbated by Western sanctions and successive living crises.
2,100 candidates, including prominent businessmen whose names are on the list of Western sanctions, are in the race to reach parliament, every four years.
This is the third election to be held after the outbreak of the conflict in March 2011. It has been postponed twice since April, when measures to tackle the new Corona Virus have taken place.
Voters go to vote in 7,313 centers in areas under the Syrian government. Polling centers were designated for the displaced from areas still outside the control of Damascus.
A member of the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, Judge Heba Fatoum, told France Press: "The elections for this legislative session come at a time when the Syrian army is spreading over large areas of the country, after regaining control of most of the areas that were under the control of armed groups."
"There are boxes in Eastern Ghouta and Idlib countryside, and other areas where there were no electoral centers in the last round," she added.
The governorate of Aleppo, for example, has allocated seven electoral centers for the Idlib people, and three centers for the displaced from Raqqa. Similar electoral centers were also allocated in the governorates of Hama (center), Tartous, Lattakia (west), and Damascus.
Syrians outside the country, including millions of refugees, cannot participate in the voting. Al-Watan newspaper quoted a member of the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, Riyad Al-Kawas, as saying that "expatriates are not allowed to vote in the People's Assembly elections, except in centers located within the country, according to the election law."
The People's Assembly has 250 seats, half of which are allocated to workers and peasants, and the other half to the rest of the people.
The next parliament is elected in the first session of its president, and the government then turns into a caretaker government, until Assad appoints a new prime minister who is charged with forming a new government.
The elected parliament accompanies the upcoming presidential elections, and any candidate in it needs "written approval of at least 35 members of the People's Assembly."
The People's Assembly has 250 seats, half of which are allocated to workers and peasants, and the other half to the rest of the people.