Did Oath-taking, leadership elections delay parliament's first session?

The postponement of the inaugural session of the Syrian Parliament to a later date, after it had been scheduled to convene on Monday, has sparked questions about the actual reasons behind the decision, particularly as the elected and appointed members had already arrived in Damascus and completed their preparations to participate in the session.

The Supreme Elections Committee, which is responsible for administering the affairs of the Parliament until its first session is convened, has not issued any official explanation for the postponement. It merely announced that the session had been deferred to a date to be determined later, according to a circular distributed to media outlets.

However, informed sources told ANHA agency that several procedural arrangements remain unresolved, foremost among them the mechanism for administering the constitutional oath, following a proposal to change it from an individual oath to a collective one.

These developments have raised further questions: Was the proposal to adopt a collective oath intended to prevent members from taking the oath in languages other than Arabic or according to different religious references?

According to previous social media posts and media statements made by some of the appointed members of Parliament, several of them had intended to take the constitutional oath in their native languages, particularly Kurdish and Turkmen members.

However, this information has not been confirmed by any official authority so far, and the Supreme Elections Committee has not issued any statement linking the postponement of the session to these reported reasons.

At the same time, the legal framework governing the Parliament's work does not currently support these assumptions. The Constitutional Declaration for the Transitional Period stipulates that "a member of the People's Assembly shall take the constitutional oath before the President of the Republic prior to assuming his or her duties." This wording indicates that the oath is to be taken individually by each member and contains no reference to administering it collectively.

This discrepancy between the legal provisions and the circulating information raises questions about whether procedural amendments have been introduced without official announcement, and whether such amendments were the reason behind postponing the inaugural session.

The sources also indicated that the procedural mechanism for determining the winners in the elections for the Speaker of Parliament, the Deputy Speakers, and the Secretary of the Assembly has not yet been publicly settled. The Constitutional Declaration merely states that the elections shall be conducted by secret ballot and by "majority," without specifying whether the required majority refers to an absolute majority (50 percent plus one), a majority of members present, or simply the highest number of votes received. According to the sources, this issue remains under discussion ahead of the first parliamentary session.

In the absence of an official explanation for the postponement, questions remain as to whether disagreements over the mechanism for administering the constitutional oath were the primary reason for delaying the Parliament's first session, or whether the postponement is part of a broader set of unresolved organizational and political issues that have yet to be finalized before the Parliament begins its work, or is connected to the anticipated visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Damascus.

ANHA