Few women and minorities win seats in Syria's first parliament since fall of Assad
Posted by F0urLeafCl0ver@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 45 comments
Minimum-Enthusiasm14@reddit
I don’t know about minorities, but for women at least there’s some minimum percentage of seats that have to be filled by women. Since the president now appoints something like a third of all seats in parliament, he’s going to have to make up the deficit from the popular vote by appointing more women himself. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, time will tell.
AsoarDragonfly@reddit
It will be gradual the evolution of Syria. The people need to change overtime together and get things done as a unit. That will pave way for more women in government
Thangoman@reddit
That sounds like a really awful system, basically give the governing party a majority as long as they get a third of the vote
Norzon24@reddit
Still an improvement over Assad appointing everyone
Norzon24@reddit
Still an improvement over Assad appointing everyone
Minimum-Enthusiasm14@reddit
You’re probably right, though at the same time, as we can see from the last elections, it does have its advantages in that it gives the president the power to make up for deficits created by the popular vote.
BendicantMias@reddit
They're only 'deficits' from the perspective of outsiders, not the local culture. They're made up for by basically ignoring the public sentiment in favor of forcing norms that don't have their basis in the public will. In other words, an undemocratic 'fix' for democracy not producing the result you'd like.
elihu@reddit
Ideally a democratic system can get around the problem of the majority getting to select all the winners by implementing some form of proportional representation.
(Syria has a ways to go before they're ready for regular elections.)
Minimum-Enthusiasm14@reddit
Women make up 50% of the population in Syria. It makes sense for them to even just be a third of the parliament.
BendicantMias@reddit
Democracy is about popular vote. The point is that the govt. reflects the people's will, whether it reflects the population or not. In fact it NEVER does, as for example most politicians everywhere are rich, which is a VERY stark difference from the average voter.
If you want a purely demographic reflection of society, then you should use a sortition centric system instead. You can shape parliament according to your surveys and randomly select MPs. An added advantage of this is that money no longer plays a role, so your politicians no longer all end up being fat cats.
In fact sortition WAS the basis of some of the earliest democratic systems. By shoehorning quotas into a popular vote based system, you end up subverting the popular will and giving a false impression of what that will actually was.
Democratic leaders are meant to be servants of the people, not their parents.
Minimum-Enthusiasm14@reddit
Most healthy democracies have some sort of checks and balances to make sure there’s no tyranny of the majority. The president appointing one third of all seats seems to be an attempt to check the majority.
Thangoman@reddit
Here in Argentina we enforce the gender quota by forcing the parties to always have women next to men and men next to women in ballots
Minimum-Enthusiasm14@reddit
Interesting. I don’t think that would go over great in Syria yet, considering the quite conservative Muslim culture there.
RealAbd121@reddit
It's a transition goverment, not meant to last long just until some rebuilding and census can be done to even know how many people exist in the country (there is no census data, IDs, records, etc)
rocketfucker9000@reddit
It's not great but it's supposed to be temporary during the transition period. Because Syria can't have actual elections right now.
okabe700@reddit
It's meant to be a transitional system officially speaking
Wheream_I@reddit
Wild world we live in that Syria has a legit diversity quota lol. I would have never expected that.
celloh234@reddit
"guys quick the new syria president is actually a decent guy but we need to sell that islam and arabs is evil and bad and that the previous murderous dictator was better in order to destabilize the region for another 20 years. Oh perfect a story that will make our braindead readers reach the conjecture we want while we lead them to there"
soggycow2790@reddit
lol
TheKingOfA@reddit
Better than the previous one
Nethlem@reddit
Your flair does not make you exactly impartial on the issue considering HTS, formerly known as Al Nusra front, was the Turkish proxy in this conflict.
Which begs the question: Why is Turkey supporting literal jihadists in a neighbouring country it totally not invaded?
h3xx0n@reddit
And your flair is not so innocent.
Here:
https://ecfr.eu/special/mena-armed-groups/syrian-democratic-forces-syria/
Here, more
https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-strengthens-its-support-stabilisation-areas-liberated-daesh-north-western-syria-2019-05-02_en
more:
https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/379548/EU-adopts-%E2%82%AC18M-million-program-to-support-northeastern-Syria
more, generally:
https://ecfr.eu/special/mena-armed-groups/syrian-democratic-forces-syria/
Why is Europe meddling in Syria's internal affairs and aiding a terrorist organization that is occupying its territories?
Why does Europe want the fragmentation of Syria? Why is it transferring its tax-paying citizens' money to these organizations?
And why, then, does Europe keep complaining when it sees millions of refugees at its borders?
Disgusting.
celloh234@reddit
Its the MO of eu and us. Fuck up an entire region beyond repair proceed to deflect all blame or responsibility through propaganda
h3xx0n@reddit
Whatever they do, the result will ultimately be to their own detriment.
See 9/11, Europe's refugee crisis, and the endangerment of their very existence. If you meddle with the Middle East, the whole world faces and pays the consequences.
adminofreditt@reddit
That's a very low standard
soggycow2790@reddit
For now perhaps.
Gravitani@reddit
His people have been hunting down minorities in the streets and he used to belong to Al Qaeda....
Platypus__Gems@reddit
A region full of muslim religious fundamentalist after ex-ISIS faction won the civil war doesn't vote for women, minorities and people of other faiths?
Truely shocking.
Norzon24@reddit
Now the constitution means said ex-ISIS faction must appoint a bunch of woman to reach the minimum 20% minimum representation
Woke DEI Jihadist might be real
The__Machinist@reddit
Pesky dictator Assad. Glad life is getting better for them now /s
loggy_sci@reddit
Pro-Russians stay tilted that their 4th favorite dictator got chased out of Damascus.
Professional-Syrup-0@reddit
While Americans are celebrating how their favorite jihadist has taken over the country, whatever happened to the “War on terror”?
loggy_sci@reddit
That former jihadist just addressed the UN. Seethe about it, I guess. Anyway, Assad was just as brutal as any of them. Now he’s gaming in Moscow. Do you think Russia pays for his GamePass? A living, breathing (for now) reminder of how Russia props up murderous dictators.
GWoT was a disaster. Hows Russia’s little neocolonial project going?
Professional-Syrup-0@reddit
Which was exactly the reason why you made him your „ally“ so why was that bad again? And why does it literally stink exactly like what was done with Saddam/Iraq?
With Assad you knew he was torturing people because you were sending him people to torture and paying him for it.
With Saddam you knew he had WMD because you used to sell them to him, and help him use them against the Iranians and Kurds.
Which begs the question: If you know these people are so horrible, then why are you aligning with them and enabling them?
And what kind of message does it send to current “allies” when you are so easily manipulated to go “We’ve always been at war with”?
loggy_sci@reddit
An 13 year old opinion article? The U.S. wasn’t an “ally”. And of course you want to talk about Saddam. The U.S. should not make arrangements with these monsters.
Of course, you won’t say anything negative about Russia propping up a murderous dictator. You have selective outrage which is only ever directed toward the U.S.
Eexoduis@reddit
HTS is not ex-ISIS. And they’re emerging from civil war. Once Western dollars come flooding in and living conditions improve, they will liberalize.
Nethlem@reddit
HTS used to be known as Al Nusra Front, an AQ off-shot that expanded from Iraq into Syria.
A process the US watched happen in the hopes it would help them with some regime change in Syria, hence the official US DoS position on Syria having been:
But sure is funny to see a most likely American account deny the AQ roots of HTS, even tho its leader Muhammad al-Jawlani still had his FBI Most Wanted poster up when he managed to take over Syria.
"Once"?
Syria has been the most expensive covert regime change action in American history, the Syrian opposition has already been supported for over a decade not just with many Western dollars, but also plenty of Western weapons, to such a degree that at times the US deep state was proxy-fighting itself in Syria.
But Assad is gone now, that was the whole purpose of the exercise; Remove a Russian/Iranian ally from the region, so there will be no more dollars for regime change in Syria.
What remains of Syria will not be an investment opportunity for "Western dollars", but rather will be cut up between Turkey and Israel, whatever those can't grab the Jihadists can keep.
None of that makes good "investment conditions" for "Western dollars", rather sounds like you learned literally nothing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which contrary to Bush's claims didn't turn out to be the new Japan and Germany, but rather turned out to be misrerable forever war zones, just like Syria will continue to be.
MongolPerson@reddit
People on syriancivilwar sub actually pretending like they're doing a liberal democracy and not still in the middle of an unresolved civil war that will end in another dictatorship. Lol
Draghalys@reddit
Lmao I actually thought the title was going "At last some women and minorities got elected to Syria's parliament" due to just waking up, can't believe they are bitching about this shit.
celloh234@reddit
Hook line and sinker
crazy_floof@reddit
This whole "election" thingy is just a theater, these terrorists are only doing these games so they appear "progressive" and "democratic", but in reality they are a bunch of Jihadi Salafists, many illiterates actually, with known history of targeting civilians, their "president" himself is a previous leader of a terrorist group that massacred hundreds of Alawites back in 2013 and he promised to annihilate the rest when he gets the chance, that individual should be trialed and eventually hanged instead of being celebrated. But what do we expect from a parallel reality where an old pedo is controlling US.
To give you an idea who theatrical an pathetic these elections are, there are 240 parliamentary seats in total, Al-Sharaa decided that he will, singlehandedly choose 70 representatives, the remaining 140 seats are given to representatives assigned by a committee of "experts" that is put together, by guess who? The fucking president again, so effectively the Syrian population had zero chance of participating in a democratic process. Oh and by the way, some of the elected individuals there are known terrorists, smugglers, thieves, you name it, many of them are promising to kill every single person who is from the wrong faith (i.e. not Salafi). The representation of minorities is effectively non-existent.
Syria is in desperate time and need for another revolution that gets rid of these terrorists. But the country is so torn apart that people don't have any energy anymore. It is sad and heartbreaking.
PatrollinTheMojave@reddit
Anybody else read this headline and go "Wow! A few women and minorities democratically-won seats in the first election after decades of brutal repression? What a great sign!" I'd have been pleasantly surprised if the elections proceeded at all without signs of major interference from the provisional government or militants. If someone could explain to me why it's damning more women weren't elected. I'd be keen to hear their argument.
Elman89@reddit
I don't disagree, but I feel like you might be lacking context here anyway.
KJongsDongUnYourFace@reddit
Woman made up 14 percent previously
Long-Cantaloupe1041@reddit
In other words, female representation has halved. Syria is proof that when a dictator weaponizes minorities, it endangers them far more than when they're demonized. In other words, this is an unfortunate consequence of Assad's use of women and minorities to whitewash his regime's image. Many around the world fell for the elaborate PR tokens, who were not only unqualified, but unrepresentative of the majority of Syrian women and Christians, who despise Assad.
While the right-wing in America and Europe try to erase or belittle women and minorities, Muslim dictatorships do the opposite, not because they care, but because they want the support of external powers like the United States, the European Union or Russia. Take a look at the relationship between the Coptic Christians and Sisi. Now take a look at the 100,000 Sunni political prisoners in Egyptian torture camps. Does it make sense to you now?