Syria’s chief, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has hailed the beginning of a “new historical past” for his nation, after signing into pressure a constitutional declaration regulating its five-year transitional interval and laying out rights for ladies and freedom of expression.
The declaration comes three months after Islamist-led rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s repressive authorities, resulting in requires an inclusive new Syria that respects rights.
It additionally follows a wave of violence that broke out on Syria’s Mediterranean coast final week, wherein safety forces killed almost 1,500 civilians, in keeping with a battle monitor, most of them members of the Alawite minority to which the Assad household belongs.
Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, stated on Thursday he hoped the constitutional declaration would mark the start of “a brand new historical past for Syria, the place we exchange oppression with justice … and struggling with mercy”, as he signed the doc on the presidential palace.
The brand new authorities had beforehand repealed the Assad-era structure and dissolved parliament.
The declaration units out a transitional interval of 5 years, throughout which a “transitional justice fee” could be fashioned to “decide the means for accountability, set up the info, and supply justice to victims and survivors” of the previous authorities’s misdeeds.
In line with a replica of the doc shared by the presidency, “the glorification of the previous Assad regime and its symbols” is forbidden, as is “denying, praising, justifying or downplaying its crimes”.
Abdul Hamid al-Awak, a member of the committee that drafted the doc, stated it additionally enshrined “girls’s proper to take part in work and schooling, and have all their social, political and financial rights assured”.
The declaration maintains the requirement that the president of the republic should be a Muslim, with Islamic jurisprudence set out as “the primary supply” of laws.
It offers the president a sole distinctive energy: declaring a state of emergency.
Awak added that the folks’s meeting, a 3rd of which will likely be appointed by the president, could be tasked with drafting all laws.
Beneath the declaration, the legislature can’t impeach the president, nor can the president dismiss any lawmakers.
Government energy would even be restricted to the president within the transitional interval, Awak stated, pointing to the necessity for “speedy motion to confront any difficulties”.
He added that the declaration additionally ensures the “freedom of opinion, expression and the press”, and affirms the independence of the judiciary.
Awak stated a committee could be fashioned to draft a brand new everlasting structure.
Sharaa, who below his earlier nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, led the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded Assad’s overthrow, was appointed interim president in late January. He promised to situation the constitutional declaration to function a “authorized reference” throughout the transition interval.
The Kurdish-led administration in north-eastern Syria sharply criticised the declaration, saying it “contradicts the fact of Syria and its variety”.
Earlier this week, the Syrian Democratic Forces – the Kurdish-led administration’s de facto military – struck a take care of the authorities in Damascus to be built-in into state establishments.
However the administration on Thursday stated the declaration “doesn’t signify the aspirations of our folks” and “undermines efforts to attain true democracy”.
The textual content of the declaration states: “Requires division and separatism, requests for overseas intervention, or reliance on overseas powers are criminalised,” with out providing specifics.
It provides, nonetheless, that the federal government “seeks to coordinate with related international locations and entities to help the reconstruction course of”.
A UN spokesperson quoted the particular envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, as saying he “hopes the [constitutional] declaration could be a stable authorized framework for a genuinely credible and inclusive political transition”, including “correct implementation will likely be key”.
The declaration comes per week after the lethal rash of violence on Syria’s coast, in what analysts described because the gravest risk up to now to the transitional course of.
Mass killings primarily focused Alawites, leading to at the least 1,476 civilian deaths by the hands of the safety forces and their allies, in keeping with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Sharaa has vowed to prosecute these behind the bloodshed, and the authorities have introduced a number of arrests.
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