On April 13 Syria will hold parliamentary election, but who is going to vote?

While the civil war continues with no possible solution ahead, the Syrian government has scheduled parliamentary  election for April 13. I found it pretty surreal. Citizens are asked to choose 250 members of the People’s Council  from 15 multi-member constituencies but nearly half of those are not under the government control.

As we well know Raqqa is occupied by the Islamic State which recently partly lost control of Deir ez-Zor. Homs is completely destroyed, and in Aleppo the ongoing fight makes it almost impossible to vote. Latakia is also partly controlled by the Syrian Army. The Kurds who established an autonomous region, known as Rojava, will not hold the elections.

“Since the autonomous administration was declared by the Kurds and other minorities, the majority Kurdish areas are out of Assad’s control, and they are administrated by the components of the region,” said Idris Nassan, a former official in the Kobane administration, said to ARA News.

Besides the political position, who is going to vote?

The question is fair considering that in 2012 there were 10 million Syrians eligible to  vote.  Today out of the 21 million population, nearly half a million have been killed, and 1.9 are injured. Nearly 3 million have fled the country, and 6.5 are internally displaced.

The last parliamentary election was held on May 7, 2012. The uprising against the president Bashar al-Assad didn’t yet evolve into a civil war, nonetheless all the indications were there. Assad’s party, the Ba’ath, won 169 seats out of the 250. The opposition got 6, and the remaining 77 to non-partizan.

The US called the 2012 election “bordering on ludicrous,” I am curious to know what the UN will say about this incoming one.