Syria will not hold elections for 4 years

Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has said it could take up to four years for the country to hold its first elections after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

In his first comments on a possible timeline for key phases of the country’s political transition, Sharaa said “any valid elections will require a comprehensive population census”.

Drafting a new constitution could also take up to three years, said Sharaa, who formerly used the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, in an interview with Saudi Arabian broadcasters al-Arabiya and al-Hadath on Sunday.

The longer than expected transition will concern western powers who have been urging Sharaa to form an inclusive administration. They are weighing the removal of sanctions on the Syrian state and terrorist designations on Sharaa and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist movement that led the lightning rebel offensive to unseat Assad.

Earlier this month, HTS appointed Mohamed al-Bashir as Syria’s interim prime minister,

Bashir, who led the civilian administration in Idlib, the north-west region that has been under HTS’s control for years, announced at the time that his cabinet, which is largely made up of HTS members who had roles in the former Idlib administration, would form a caretaker government until March next year.

Sharaa also addressed HTS’s dominant role in the transitional government, telling the broadcasters that “the current form of appointments was a necessity of the stage” and that a “quota system during this period would have destroyed the transitional work”.