Transitional People's Assembly of Syria

Transitional People's Assembly
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Overview
Legislative body	People's Assembly
Jurisdiction	Syria
Meeting place	People's Assembly Building, Damascus
Term	12 July 2026 – present (2026-07-12 – present)
Election	2025
Government	Transitional
People's Assembly
Independent (171)   Muslim Brotherhood (25)   ENKS (6)   ADO (1)   MJDS (1)   STA (1)   Vacant (5)
Members	210
Speaker	Abdul Hamid al-Awak (I)
First Deputy Speaker	Mustafa al-Mousa (I)
Second Deputy Speaker	Madonna Bishara (I)
Secretary	Mu'ayyad Habib (I)
Special sessions
1st 12 July 2026 – present (2026-07-12 – present)

The People's Assembly (Arabic: مجلس الشعب, romanized: Majlis al-Shaʿb), also known as the Transitional People's Assembly (Arabic: مجلس الشعب الانتقالي, romanized: Majlis al-Shaʿb al-Intiqālī), and occasionally as the First People's Assembly (Arabic: الدور التشريعي الأول, romanized: Al-dawr al-tashrīʿī al-awwal), is Syria's first legislative term since the fall of the Assad regime, and the twenty-second since the founding of the republic in 1932.

The term of the People's Assembly is two and a half years (thirty months), subject to renewal. Therefore, if its term is not renewed, it will expire thirty months after its first sitting on 12 July 2026, on 12 January 2029.

Background

Following the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, the People's Assembly issued a statement calling that day a "historic day in the lives of all Syrians", stating that it would work towards ensuring the rule of law without discrimination. On 12 December 2024, the Syrian caretaker government suspended both the Assembly and the constitution for a three-month transitional period. The Assembly was formally dissolved on 29 January 2025, when the transitional authorities announced plans to establish an interim legislative council.

The Constitutional Declaration was adopted on 13 March, and provided for the establishment of a provisional legislature, also referred to as the "People's Assembly", to serve during a five-year transitional period. Under the transitional framework, one-third of the members are appointed by the president, while the remaining two-thirds are selected through electoral bodies supervised by a committee designated by the presidency.

On 2 June 2025, a presidential decree established the Higher Committee for People's Assembly Elections, an 11-member body responsible for overseeing the formation of electoral subcommittees tasked with selecting members of the Assembly. No time limit was set for the Committee to complete its work, and Syria's legislative and oversight vacuum accordingly extended for many months before the Assembly convened.

The convening of the Assembly's first sitting was repeatedly delayed: Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani announced, from the Manama Dialogue, that the sitting would be held at the end of November 2025, a date which passed without the sitting taking place and without any formal postponement being announced; President Ahmed al-Sharaa then announced, from the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in March 2026, that the sitting would be held at the end of April 2026, a date which likewise did not materialise.

On 1 November 2025, the Higher Committee for People's Assembly Elections announced what it described as the final results of member elections in the electoral districts of Syria's governorates, with the exception of Al-Hasakah, Raqqa and Suwayda governorates, for political and security reasons; the selection of Al-Hasakah's and Raqqa's members was completed by May 2026, while the Arab press reported a semi-official date of 8 June 2026 for the first sitting, following the announcement of the president's quota and final ratification of all members elected through the regional bodies, before this too was postponed again until 12 July.

Bureau of the People's Assembly

Position		Name	Party		Tenure
Speaker		Abdul Hamid al-Awak		Independent	12 July 2026 – present (2026-07-12 – present)
Deputy Speaker	1st	Mustafa al-Mousa		Independent	12 July 2026 – present (2026-07-12 – present)
	2nd	Madonna Bishara		Independent	12 July 2026 – present (2026-07-12 – present)
Secretary		Mu'ayyad Habib		Independent	12 July 2026 – present (2026-07-12 – present)

Elections of the Bureau

The People's Assembly elected its bureau at the first sitting of the first special session, on 12 July 2026.

Election of the Speaker

Candidate		Party	Votes	%
	Abdul Hamid al-Awak	Independent	99	48.29
	Mouayad al-Qablawi	Independent	75	36.59
	Muhammad Ramez Korej	Independent	31	15.12
Total			205	100.00
Valid votes			205	99.51
Invalid/blank votes			1	0.49
Total votes			206	100.00
Registered voters/turnout			206	100.00
	Abdul Hamid al-Awak is elected

Election of the Deputy Speakers

Candidate		Party	Votes	%
	Mustafa al-Mousa	Independent	122	59.51
	Madonna Bishara	Independent	67	32.68
	Adnan al-Khatib	Independent	52	25.37
	Ghassan al-Abdullah	Independent	43	20.98
	Nour al-Jandali	Independent	38	18.54
	Muhammad al-Bakir	Independent	34	16.59
	Rankin Abdo	Independent	23	11.22
	Muhammad Suleiman Dahla	Independent	15	7.32
	Abdul Hakim Bashar	KDPS	10	4.88
	Mai Khalouf	Independent	7	3.41
Total			411	100.00
Valid votes			205	99.51
Invalid/blank votes			1	0.49
Total votes			206	100.00
Registered voters/turnout			206	100.00
	Mustafa al-Mousa is elected
	Madonna Bishara is elected

Election of the Secretary

Candidate		Party	Votes	%
	Mu'ayyad Habib	Independent	87	42.44
	Abdul-Karim Barakat	Independent	47	22.93
	Yasser ash-Shahada	Independent	26	12.68
	Omar Gharibo	Independent	23	11.22
	Jaafar as-Sadiq Tahan	Independent	11	5.37
	Ayesh az-Zarqa	Independent	11	5.37
Total			205	100.00
Valid votes			205	99.51
Invalid/blank votes			1	0.49
Total votes			206	100.00
Registered voters/turnout			206	100.00
	Mu'ayyad Habib is elected

Members

Main article: List of members of the People's Assembly (Syria), 2026–present

The Assembly's membership includes 22 women, about 10.5% of its total seats, of whom seven were elected through the electoral bodies and 15 were appointed by President al-Sharaa as part of the supplementary third. The Assembly also has 12 Kurdish members, out of 210, or 5.7% of its total seats.

In July 2026, the Assembly announced the temporary suspension of member Mudar Hamdan's attendance and activities within the Assembly, following a campaign of accusations linking him to the former regime, pending review of his file and the issuing of recommendations by a specialised committee; the Assembly stressed that the suspension did not amount to a decision to expel him or terminate his membership.

Several members of the People's Assembly (MPs) are affiliated with political parties. As of August 2026, none of these parties are officially licensed or registered in Syria; consequently, the following table reflects de facto party affiliations. De jure, all MPs are independents.

Party				Members
				At commencement	Current	Difference
	Independent			172 / 210 (82%)	171 / 210 (81%)	1
	Muslim Brotherhood			25 / 210 (12%)	25 / 210 (12%)
	Kurdish National Council		Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria	4 / 210 (2%)	4 / 210 (2%)
			Kurdistan Democratic Unity Party	1 / 210 (0.5%)	1 / 210 (0.5%)
			Kurdish Democratic Equality Party in Syria	1 / 210 (0.5%)	1 / 210 (0.5%)
	Syrian Turkmen Assembly			1 / 210 (0.5%)	1 / 210 (0.5%)
	Assyrian Democratic Organization			1 / 210 (0.5%)	1 / 210 (0.5%)
	Movement for Justice and Development			1 / 210 (0.5%)	1 / 210 (0.5%)
Vacant				4 / 210 (2%)	5 / 210 (2%)	1

Election and appointment

On election day, 5 October 2025, 119 members were elected, after voting was postponed in 21 seats across Suwayda, Raqqa and Al-Hasakah governorates and the Ayn al-Arab district for security reasons. Additional election rounds were subsequently held on 23 October 2025, 17 March 2026 and 24 May 2026, raising the number of elected members to 137; the three seats in Suwayda Governorate remain vacant.

The President of Syria is to appoint 70 members, one-third of the assembly. By late May 2026, Syrian officials reported that President Ahmed al-Sharaa's list of appointees had been finalised and would be announced "in the coming days", and that the assembly's inaugural sitting had been preliminarily scheduled for 8 June 2026, after the Eid al-Adha holiday; the three Suwayda seats were to remain vacant until security conditions allowed elections there. Hawar News Agency reported that the first sitting of the People's Assembly would be held on 8 June 2026, but despite those reports, it did not convene.

On 30 June, it was officially confirmed that the list of al-Sharaa's appointees would be released on 1 July. Al-Sharaa's appointees were chosen by a committee that completed a series of meetings and closed interviews conducted between 15 and 21 June, interviewing 100 candidates. The appointments were officially announced on 1 July, with 15 women appointed. The Secretary-General of the People's Assembly, Muhammad Hamza Shamout, explained that the "supplementary third" of the Assembly's members comprises 23 notables and 47 qualified professionals, including 12 with master's degrees and 17 with PhDs.

Although the inaugural sitting had been scheduled for 6 July 2026, the Higher Committee for People's Assembly Elections postponed it on 5 July to an unspecified later date without publicly stating a reason. Under Article 39 of the provisional electoral system, the Higher Committee chairman must convene members for the first sitting within three to seven days of the decree naming the Assembly's members.

Postponement of the first sitting

Reports on the reason for the delay diverged. Some accounts framed the postponement as more than an administrative matter, describing it as an early signal of the political balances shaping the new transitional period, with the delay tied to ongoing efforts to reach cross-bloc consensus on the Assembly's bureau — whose composition was seen as needing to reflect the political, ethnic and religious make-up of the new chamber. Other accounts linked it to security arrangements surrounding French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Damascus on 6 July and President al-Sharaa's attendance at the NATO summit in Ankara, with the sitting then expected to be rescheduled within a day or two. However, two Assembly members told Al-Quds al-Arabi they considered it unlikely the postponement was connected to the Macron visit, since it had long been scheduled and the Higher Committee chairman, a senior foreign ministry official, would have known of it in advance; they instead attributed the delay to objections raised over the "procedural instructions for the first sitting" document.

That document, circulated to members before the sitting scheduled for 6 July, drew objections on several points where it appeared to conflict with the Constitutional Declaration and the provisional electoral system:

• Who presides: the instructions gave the Higher Committee chairman an expanded role in opening the sitting, calling the roll, administering the oath and inviting the President to speak, before handing the chair to the oldest member after a recess and the start of the bureau elections — whereas Article 39 of the electoral system and Article 28 of the Constitutional Declaration both provide that the first sitting is chaired by the oldest member.
• The oath: the Constitutional Declaration provides for members to take the oath before the President, whereas the procedural instructions had them take it during the sitting under a different procedure; a separate account reported that the instructions instead provided for the oath to be taken before the Speaker of the Assembly rather than the President, framed as enshrining the principle of separation of powers.
• Timing of the President's address: the instructions had the Higher Committee chairman invite the President to speak during the first sitting, before the bureau election, whereas Article 40 of the electoral system provides for the elected Speaker of the Assembly to invite the President to address the second sitting.
• Bureau composition: Article 28 of the Constitutional Declaration provides for a Speaker, two deputy speakers and one secretary, while Article 39 of the electoral system provides for a Speaker, one deputy speaker and two secretaries; the instructions followed the formula of one deputy speaker and two secretaries.
• Voting threshold: the Constitutional Declaration specifies election "by majority" without defining whether this means an absolute majority, a majority of those present, or a plurality; the procedural instructions declared the candidate with the largest number of valid votes the winner regardless of whether this exceeded half the votes, without providing for a run-off round or a tie-breaking mechanism.
• New candidacy restriction: the instructions barred a candidate defeated in one bureau election from later standing for another bureau post during the same sitting, a restriction found in neither the Constitutional Declaration nor the electoral system.

Objectors also questioned the Higher Committee's impartiality in managing the sitting, noting that seven of its own members had themselves become Assembly members under the president's supplementary list.

Following the postponement, the Higher Committee created a WhatsApp group of 207 of the Assembly's 210 members (excluding the three vacant Suwayda seats), together with Higher Committee members, to discuss the upcoming sitting and canvass declared candidacies for the bureau posts alike; the disputed procedures were circulated there and confirmed in their final form, despite continued objections. Members said the sitting could not be held until a consensus was reached on forming a bureau reflecting the different components of Syrian society, and that this depended in part on President al-Sharaa's return from Turkey.

Candidates for the Bureau elections

By early July, seven members had declared candidacies for Speaker: Abdul Hamid al-Awak, a legal adviser and member of the committee that drafted the Constitutional Declaration, appointed for Al-Hasakah Governorate; Azzam Khanji, elected for Mount Simeon, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a characterisation he has denied; Mohammed Ali Yassin, a presidential adviser appointed for Aleppo Governorate; Jaafar as-Sadiq Tahan, elected for the Azaz electoral district; Mu'ayyad Qabtour, elected for Azaz; Jamal an-Numeri, elected for Quneitra; and Mahmoud Asaad, elected for Tadmur. Despite the number of declared candidates, parliamentary and political sources described the real contest as narrowed to a small number of names, with contacts under way to persuade some to withdraw in favour of a consensus candidate who could spare the Assembly a contested vote in its first sitting.

Al-Awak emerged as the frontrunner, drawing support across the Jazira bloc (Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Al-Hasakah, with 42 votes) as well as broad Muslim and Christian backing, owing to his role in drafting the Constitutional Declaration and in national dialogue efforts. Sources described him as gaining momentum in the days before the scheduled sitting, citing his legal background and consensus-oriented profile as qualities drawing support from blocs seeking a Speaker able to manage a politically and socially diverse chamber; some sources noted he was seen as personally professional and technical in character, without association with political disputes that might trouble particular communities. Al-Awak reportedly presented himself in meetings with Assembly members as backed by President al-Sharaa, though the presidency had not officially committed to any single candidate and had issued no public statement on the race; separately, several government officials were said to be working individually to build support for al-Awak, a stance sources characterised as reflecting personal positions rather than a formal presidential decision.

A rival bid came from Khanji of the Aleppo bloc; a competing Aleppo candidate, Yassin, claimed the backing of 20 of the province's 46 votes. To avoid splitting the province's vote, the Aleppo bloc held a binding internal ballot in which Yassin received 32 votes, formalising him as the bloc's candidate in cross-bloc negotiations; members described the vote as an effort to present a unified front rather than a sign of division within the bloc. Bloc members linked the push for the Speakership to Aleppo's position as Syria's largest province by population and economic weight, arguing this was not matched by political representation in decision-making circles, while stressing the bid was not meant as a confrontation with the presidency or other blocs; they said they were prepared to drop their candidate if consultations produced a broadly accepted consensus figure, describing a successful first sitting as a higher priority than the contest over posts.

For the deputy speakers' posts, discussion centred on selecting one woman, possibly Kurdish, and one Christian member, with Nawar Najma — the Higher Committee's spokesman and a member of the Greek Orthodox church, the largest Christian denomination in Syria — leading the list of candidates for the Christian seat. Christian churches urged the government to preserve a decades-long tradition of a Christian deputy speaker, a request given added weight after Christian representation in the Assembly fell to roughly 3% (six of 210 seats) from about 8% (20 of 250) in the previous assembly; Christian sources described preserving this representation within the bureau as carrying political and symbolic weight beyond the distribution of posts, framing it as reassurance about partnership in state institutions during the transitional period.

Parliamentary blocs

Several blocs were reported to be forming among members even before the Assembly's first sitting: a pro-government bloc, described as the largest; a bloc close to the Muslim Brotherhood estimated at around 40 members; a roughly 20-member "democratic" bloc of liberals, former socialists and communists, nationalists and members linked to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, seen as a potential swing bloc; and a nascent coalition of ethnic and religious minorities encompassing Kurdish, Syriac, Christian, Ismaili, Druze and Alawite members, which had not yet fully coalesced. The Assembly's eleven Kurdish members were reported to be distributed across these blocs rather than forming a unified voting bloc. Parliamentary sources cautioned these alignments remained in formation and could shift after the bureau election, but said they marked the first appearance of genuine political balances within a Syrian legislative body, after decades in which the People's Assembly had functioned more as a body ratifying executive decisions than as a forum for political debate and competition.

The final hours before the sitting convened saw heated discussions over endorsing certain candidates for bureau posts or pressuring others to withdraw; sources said the dispute played out between Assembly members on one side and representatives of the executive authority on the other, who intervened to endorse some candidates and press for others to withdraw, succeeding in part just hours before the opening sitting began, while a majority of members, according to the same sources, held to the Assembly's independence in choosing its bureau through either election or internal consensus. The Syrian administration attached great importance to the Assembly speakership because of the message it sends abroad, seeking a consensus candidate with broad acceptance while avoiding figures who might trouble some allied states. Several Syrian governorates held internal elections and dialogue sittings among their members, most notably Aleppo, whose bloc reached consensus on Muhammad Ramez Korej as its sole candidate after both Mohammed Yassin (who won more than 30 votes in an internal election) and Azzam Khanji withdrew; Damascus, meanwhile, saw members withdraw their candidacies in favour of the president's list, while others preferred to contest the deputy speaker posts, among them rights lawyer Muhammad Suleiman Dahla, the consensus candidate of the Damascus and countryside bloc.

Assembly member Abdulaziz Maghribi described the attempts to form parliamentary groupings, and the divisions and pressures that accompanied them, as natural, given that members entered the Assembly through governorate blocs amid the country's exceptional circumstances and the absence of parties, saying: "We are facing a new parliament elected in the absence of political parties... today we are experiencing a leap in political maturity, and this points to a trend towards what might be classed as a primitive bloc in the race for the presiding bureau." Political writer Abdul Wahab Assi, by contrast, argued that the executive authority's intervention — whether by pressuring the choice of Speaker, delaying the sitting, or intervening in the Assembly's powers — damaged attempts to build a nucleus of member blocs, particularly the larger Aleppo bloc, whose candidate had a high internal vote share that could have rivalled the presidency's preferred candidate. Analyst Darwish Khalifa said he did not believe parliamentary blocs existed in the recognised political sense, "because nominations to the People's Assembly took place individually, and were not based on partisan or ideological groupings, and so the outcome was a consensus-based Assembly speakership."

Reports also said President al-Sharaa hosted Assembly members at a lunch at the People's Palace on 11 July 2026, the day before the first sitting. The President presented members with his vision and rules for the Assembly's work, in what was described as "firm" language, and floated candidates for its speakership, among them Abdul Hamid al-Awak, who was later elected Speaker; writer Ali al-Abdullah, in an opinion piece for An-Nahar, took this as evidence that the executive authority was keen to prevent the emergence of any partisan or regional blocs that might limit its ability to steer the Assembly's work.

First sitting

The People's Assembly held the first sitting of its first special session on 12 July 2026, attended by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani, Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais, Interior Minister Anas Khattab, and the chairman of the Higher Committee for People's Assembly Elections, Muhammad Taha al-Ahmad. For the first time in the history of the Syrian People's Assembly, members collectively took the constitutional oath before the President, and the President's address to the Assembly ended without cheering or applause from the floor, unlike the practice of Assembly sittings under the former regime. President al-Sharaa entered the hall quietly and sat among the members' seats before delivering a brief address in which he called on the Assembly to be "a model of responsibility and competence" and to "contribute to entrenching a culture of dialogue, the rule of law and respect for institutions." The chair was then taken, under the provisional electoral system, by Osama al-Assaf, the oldest member, so that the Assembly could elect its bureau; al-Assaf faced repeated objections from members during the discussion of voting procedures and responded that the Assembly "has no rules and no law of its own, and this is something entirely new." State media broadcast the sitting's proceedings in full, including the discussions, objections and voting results, unlike the coverage of People's Assembly sittings under the former regime.

In his address after his election, al-Awak told the executive authority: "We will cooperate with you, and we will facilitate legislation to the fullest extent we can." Closing the sitting, the newly elected Secretary, Mu'ayyad Habib, said: "History will not record who won today, but how this sitting was conducted, and how Syrians gathered once again under parliament's dome; the assemblies that come after us will follow in our footsteps — if we are weak, they will be weak, and if we are strong, they will be strong."

Rules of procedure

Drafting

On 17 July 2026, Assembly Speaker Abdul Hamid al-Awak formed a temporary 17-member committee to draft the Assembly's rules of procedure, chaired by Abdul Nasser al-Hawshan and with Hisham al-Afiouni as rapporteur; its other members were Kinan al-Nahhas, Abdul Qader Khoja, Nour Arabo, Tamam al-Loudaami, Ahmad al-Omar, Akram al-Assaf, Saadi Sakriyeh, Khaled al-Salloum, Amjad Ali, Saad al-Shuwaish, Mohammed al-Mudhib, Imad al-Ashrafani, Mahmoud Madi al-Ali, Ayman al-Shuqairi and Samira al-Wattar. The committee began its work on Sunday 19 July and concluded it on the evening of Thursday 23 July, a span of four days, drawing on a preliminary draft that some legally trained members had prepared during the months of waiting that preceded the first sitting, as well as on the rules of procedure of other Arab parliaments, foremost among them those of the Jordanian parliament.

Debate and adoption

On Sunday 26 July 2026, the Assembly opened the second sitting of its first special session and discussed the bureau's report and the report of the committee tasked with drafting the rules, before proceeding to debate its articles one by one ahead of a vote. At the end of the first day of debate, Speaker al-Awak announced that members had completed 16 articles "after rich contributions and considerable discussion and dialogue among members on every article." The following day (27 July), the Assembly adopted 14 further articles, bringing the total adopted to 30, amid consensus that al-Awak and the rest of the bureau would remain in their posts for the Assembly's full 30-month term, after some members had called for halving that term. The draft rules were debated in closed sittings that were not broadcast live, unlike the opening sitting, which had been broadcast in full, on the grounds that this allowed more room for free discussion among members. The sittings were accompanied by the authorities closing the main roads leading to the Assembly building in the al-Salihiyah district of Damascus, causing traffic paralysis in the heart of the capital's commercial centre and a wave of discontent among residents and merchants, which prompted members themselves to call for the roads to be reopened.

On Tuesday 28 July, Article 30, concerning the naming of the Assembly's committees and defining their remits, failed to win the votes needed for adoption, receiving only 85 votes. The Assembly then picked up its pace, adopting 130 further articles that same day, bringing the total adopted to 160 of 227 (about 60% of the draft), after members were asked to stop unnecessary interventions. By noon the following day (29 July), the number of adopted articles had reached 180, without notable debate or disagreement, including articles on accountability, hearing testimony from the executive authority, and lifting members' immunity. On Thursday 30 July, the Assembly adopted the rules of procedure in their final form by a majority, after five days of article-by-article debate, bringing the total number of articles to 231, arranged in 11 chapters, with 205 of the Assembly's 210 members in attendance. Deputy Speaker Madonna Bishara described the adoption of the rules as the first step towards establishing the institutional framework governing the Assembly's work, calling the coming phase a "legislative revolution" given the scale of the responsibilities facing the Assembly; Secretary Mu'ayyad Habib, for his part, described the debate as "the broadest parliamentary debate the Assembly's dome has witnessed in decades," noting that some articles drew more than 50 interventions.

Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee controversy

The initial draft of the rules of procedure did not include a committee dedicated to foreign affairs, unlike most of the world's parliaments and unlike the previous rules of procedure, which had featured an "Arab and Foreign Affairs Committee"; the committee's absence sparked widespread controversy on social media and within the Assembly, with a number of members insisting the article on committees not be adopted without it. A source inside the Assembly told the website Ultra Syria that the committee had not been dropped at any stage, and that talk of its removal was "incorrect." On 28 July, the Assembly re-formed the committee under a new name, the "Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee," retaining its traditional remit of following the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and international parliamentary relations, studying international agreements, discussing foreign policy, questioning the foreign minister, and submitting recommendations to the Assembly.

Views differed on the significance of the name change. Governance expert Rabal al-Zein argued that having committee chairs, vice-chairs and rapporteurs appointed by the executive bureau, rather than elected from within each committee as had previously been the practice, "is not a technical matter," since it could turn the Legislation and Constitutional Affairs Committee into a "mandatory gateway" and a "bureaucratic bottleneck" capable of stalling legislation or reshaping it before it reached public debate; he linked this to the removal of the "vote of no confidence" tool against officials under the new rules, arguing that this "leads to the diminishing of the Assembly's oversight bodies and tools." Samer Dhi'i, director of the "Free Syrian Jurists' League," by contrast, viewed the committee's creation as a necessary completion of the Assembly's institutional structure enabling it to exercise its constitutional powers, particularly ratifying international treaties and overseeing foreign-relations files at a stage of rebuilding international relations, lifting sanctions and reconstruction; he noted, however, that the name "Diplomatic and Consular Affairs" was narrower than "Foreign Affairs," and that dropping the word "expatriates" from the name deserved attention given the connection of millions of Syrians abroad to documentation, passport and status-regularisation issues, calling for the committee to be given genuine oversight tools, chief among them mandatory referral of draft treaties to it before they are put to the general assembly, the power to summon the foreign minister, and early access to agreements before they are signed. Assembly member Yasser ash-Shahada, for his part, considered talk of "creating" the committee to involve "a degree of exaggeration," explaining that the Assembly had adopted several new committees during its debates besides this one alone, among them the reconstruction and the martyrs and navigation committees, and that the committee's remit was limited to studying legislation related to diplomatic and consular affairs, while ratifying international agreements remained the prerogative of the Assembly's general body as a whole. Assembly member Abdul Mawla al-Hariri, representing Daraa Governorate, acknowledged that some members had proposed abolishing the foreign relations committee, which others rejected, leading to amendments, saying: "I personally am not satisfied with it, but we work under the rule of law and respect for the majority vote."

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, in an analysis, argued that excluding foreign affairs and international agreements from legislative oversight, by not forming a committee named "Foreign Affairs" and settling instead for a "Diplomatic and Consular Affairs" committee, exposed a power structure — comprising the presidency, the foreign ministry and the security services — that stood above oversight institutions and whose decisions were not accountable even to the People's Assembly itself, in the context of foreign policy being concentrated in the hands of the foreign ministry in parallel with the formation of a "National Security Council" in March 2025, whose management was entrusted to Interior Minister Anas Khattab.

Key provisions

According to what has been published of its articles, the rules of procedure include the following:

• Term of the Assembly and bureau: the Assembly's term runs for 30 months, renewable under the Constitutional Declaration, and the Speaker, the two deputy speakers and the secretary remain in their posts for the full term, with a third of members entitled to submit a reasoned request to withdraw the membership of a bureau member.
• Sessions: the Assembly holds three ordinary sessions a year and may be called into special session at the request of the President, a third of members, or the Assembly's bureau.
• Openness and voting: Assembly sittings are, as a rule, public and broadcast by means determined by the bureau, with the possibility of halting the broadcast on a reasoned request; voting, too, is public as a rule, except in exceptional cases adopted by a majority. A closed sitting is held at the request of the President, the Speaker, or a tenth of members, for reasons related to national security.
• Absolute majority: laws on elections, parties, the judicial authority, the council of state, the Supreme Constitutional Court, and transitional justice require the approval of an absolute majority of Assembly members.
• Relationship with the presidency: draft laws submitted by the President are placed on the agenda of the first sitting following their receipt and referred to the competent committee, which has the right to review their legal drafting; the President has the right to object to any law adopted by the Assembly within a month of receiving it, provided the objection is reasoned; international treaties and agreements are likewise referred by the President to the Assembly for ratification or rejection, and the President has the right to propose amending the Constitutional Declaration, subject to a vote by the Assembly.
• Immunity and prohibitions: no penal measures may be taken against any member, nor may a member be suspended or arrested, except when caught in the act of a flagrant offence; the rules prohibit members from glorifying the former regime or denying its crimes, and likewise prohibit calling for the secession or partition of any part of Syria under any name.
• Limits of oversight: the rules allow for hearing sittings with ministers, questioning them, and debating the general budget, but do not grant the Assembly a "vote of no confidence" tool against the government or any minister, since the formation of the government does not in the first place require the Assembly's confidence.

In an extended analysis of the rules' provisions, journalist Menhel Bareesh observed that Articles 21, 22 and 23 grant the Speaker broad organisational and administrative powers as the Assembly's representative, the supervisor of the rules' implementation, and the organiser of the institution's work and relations, while the two deputy speakers' role remains closer to assisting him and standing in for him in his absence; combining the management of sittings, representation, administrative supervision and influence over the formation of committee chairmanships in the hands of a single Speaker, with the bureau remaining in place for the whole term, gives him the ability to steer the Assembly's legislative and oversight priorities. He also considered the openness of sittings "a rule subject to restriction" as long as the bureau controls the means of broadcast and the criteria for halting it or shifting to secrecy have not yet been published, and that the value of open voting depends on publishing results by members' names rather than by vote totals alone; he concluded that oversight "without a vote of no confidence" remains contingent on how far officials are obliged to attend and answer, and on the possibility of escalating questioning into a general debate or an inquiry committee.

Suspension of sittings after adoption

The Assembly did not meet again for more than a month after adopting the rules of procedure on 30 July. Assembly member Kinan al-Nahhas explained, in a Facebook post dated 24 August 2026, that this was due to two reasons: the text of the rules of procedure had not yet been published in the Official Gazette despite this "supposedly" being a priority, and the expenses needed for the Assembly's work had not been covered, owing to what appeared to him to be either a liquidity shortfall or a dispute between the Assembly's bureau and an official body over their financial coverage; he noted that the rules of procedure refer the study and adoption of the Assembly's budget to the Assembly itself, without direct intervention from any government ministry, in keeping with parliamentary custom in Syria and elsewhere. Because sittings had stopped, members had not been briefed on the state budget for 2026, nor were they able to formally pursue the case of Mohammed Ghmeira within the Assembly, despite coordinating informally to prepare their files in anticipation of sittings resuming. Ghmeira is not a member of the Assembly, but a young Syrian man who died after being detained at a police station, in an incident that sparked controversy, with some accusing the security authorities of torturing him in a manner that led to his death.

In this context, Fadel Abdul Ghani, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, argued that the Constitutional Declaration contains no provision preventing the Assembly from continuing to meet before its rules of procedure are published in the Official Gazette, and that Article 29 of the Declaration obliges the Assembly to prepare its rules of procedure within a month of its first sitting, but does not make publication a condition for continuing to meet, since the Assembly's legislative and oversight powers derive their legitimacy from the Constitutional Declaration itself, not from the rules of procedure alone; he stressed, however, the need to distinguish between continuing to meet and using rules of procedure unavailable to the public to take decisions affecting members' rights or the integrity of the legislative process, arguing that publishing the full text of the rules, budget transparency, open sittings and documenting decisions were the practical guarantees enabling Syrians to hold both the Assembly and the government accountable, and that "no authority has the right to interfere in the powers of the People's Assembly as defined by the Constitutional Declaration, whether by imposing the agenda, obstructing the work of committees, influencing voting, or using financial resources to weaken the Assembly's ability to legislate and provide oversight." The rules of procedure were published in the Official Gazette shortly before the end of August 2026, according to al-Nahhas's later confirmation.

Committees

Following the adoption of the rules of procedure on 30 July, and Decision No. 109 of 2026 issued by Assembly Speaker Abdul Hamid al-Awak on 28 August 2026, the Assembly came to have 26 standing committees. The decision was based on paragraph 1 of Article 30 and paragraph 8 of Article 22 of the rules of procedure, and on meetings held by the Assembly's bureau on 7, 8, 12, 19 and 26 August 2026. Under the rules of procedure, each member may join up to two committees, provided that the chair of one committee is not a member of another, and committee membership ranges between 7 and 17 members. Women chaired six of the 26 committees, a proportion described as relatively acceptable given the generally limited representation of women in the Assembly as a whole.

Three of the 26 committees were regarded as "sovereign committees" in which the Syrian presidency played the leading role in naming their members: the Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee, the Defence, National Security and Emergency Committee, and the Public Freedoms and Human Rights Committee; the Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee, with 17 members, was described as "the most important committee in the Assembly," and lawyer Samira al-Wattar was chosen to chair it in the interest of Syria's external image, while Nawar Najma was chosen as its vice-chair for his good relations with the political circle linked to the foreign ministry. The committee-formation stage saw a repeat of the same controversy that had accompanied the adoption of the rules of procedure, with sources saying the first test the Assembly faced at this stage was a decision to abolish the Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee, which sparked a wave of sharp criticism within the Assembly that led to it being reversed.

The committee membership lists did not include the name of Kurdish leader Ilham Ahmad, formerly head of foreign relations in the Autonomous Administration, pending a presidential decree appointing her within the supplementary third, to take the place of MPA Mudar Hamdan, who resigned his membership in August 2026 amid accusations of being among the "remnants of the former regime"; parliamentary sources denied to Asharq Al-Awsat any official confirmation of Ahmad's appointment as of that time. Among the other vacant seats was that of Idlib Governorate, vacated by the death of MPA Muhammad Mustafa Kalthoum, and the three seats of Suwayda Governorate, where elections had not yet been held.

According to parliamentary sources, the formation of the committees was delayed owing to their sheer number, and it was decided that the Assembly would begin its legislative work in the second week of September 2026, with priority given to the transitional justice law, on which the trial of more than 6,000 detainees among the remnants of the former regime would be based.

The Syrian Arab News Agency grouped the 26 committees into broad categories: legislative and financial, such as constitutional and legislative affairs, budget and accounts, financial laws, and economic affairs; service and development, such as education, higher education, health, agriculture, energy, transport and tourism and culture; administrative, economic and technical, such as local administration, investment and reconstruction, crossings and customs, and communications and digital transformation, and political, security and human-rights related, such as defence and national security, diplomatic and consular affairs and public freedoms and human rights, in addition to media, social affairs and labour, youth and sports, family and women, and endowments and religious affairs.

An analytical article argued that the committees' greatest challenges lay in the shortage of time, given that a number of ministries, civil-society organisations and some political currents had submitted ready-made draft laws in their fields for the committees to use as reference material, which was described as a "double-edged sword" that saves time but places heavy responsibility on choosing the most suitable wording, in addition to the challenge of setting priorities between what the Syrian leadership sees as most pressing and what Syrians themselves see as most pressing, foremost among them the parties law.

Committee	Bureau		Party
Affairs of Victims and Martyrs of the Revolution Committee	Chair	Ayman Shamo		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Mervat Toto		Independent
Agriculture and Food Security Committee	Chair	Israa al-Mashhour		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Hammoud al-Hassan al-Hamoud		Independent
Budget and Accounts Committee	Chair	Amin al-Bashir		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Husam al-Din Razma		Independent
Communications, Digital Transformation and Information Technology Committee	Chair	Lara Qadid		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Samer Qara Ali		Independent
Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee	Chair	Abdul Nasser al-Hawshan		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Hassan Daghim		Independent
Culture, Heritage and Cultural Diversity Committee	Chair	Tariq Salou		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Nizar ar-Rashdan		Independent
Defence, National Security and Emergency Committee	Chair	Khaldoun al-Ahmad		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Munther Saras		Independent
Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee	Chair	Samira al-Wattar		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Nawar Najma		Independent
Economic Affairs Committee	Chair	Lina Aizouqi		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Abdullah al-Zayed		Independent
Education Committee	Chair	Waddah Rajab		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Abdul-Fattah Obaid		Independent
Endowments, Religious Affairs and Fatwa Committee	Chair	Adnan al-Khatib		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Subh al-Badah		Independent
Energy Committee	Chair	Iqbal Mansour		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Abdul-Karim Akidi		Independent
Family and Women Committee	Chair	Asma al-Saba'i		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Rankin Abdo		Independent
Financial Laws Committee	Chair	Mustafa Akoush		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Adnan al-Masalma		Independent
Health Committee	Chair	Arif Razzuq		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Aws Othman		Independent
Higher Education and Scientific Research Committee	Chair	Ahmad al-Afdal		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Muhammad Ramez Korej		Independent
Investment, Reconstruction and Sustainable Development Committee	Chair	Husam al-Din Tatari		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Ayesh az-Zarqa		Independent
Local Administration and Development Committee	Chair	Imad al-Ashrafani		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Mahmoud al-Uweis		Independent
Media Committee	Chair	Mouayad al-Qablawi		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Mohammed Balas		Independent
Public Crossings and Customs Committee	Chair	Muhammad Surur al-Mudhib		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Abdul-Razzaq Rayes		Independent
Public Freedoms and Human Rights Committee	Chair	Hassan Soufan		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Yasser ash-Shahada		Independent
Social Affairs and Labour Committee	Chair	Mahmoud Mustafa		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Alwan al-Ali		Independent
Tourism Committee	Chair	Mahmoud al-Ali		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Ali Masoud		Independent
Transitional Justice and Civil Peace Committee	Chair	Osama al-Assaf		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Maher Alloush		Independent
Transport and Navigation Committee	Chair	Kim Ibrahim		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Muhammad al-Mahali		Independent
Youth and Sports Committee	Chair	Wajdi Zaido		Independent
	Vice-Chair	Osama an-Na'ous		Independent

Subsequent developments

The People's Assembly held its third sitting on Sunday 13 September 2026, with the resignation of MPA Mudar Hamdan and the abolition of the Counter-Terrorism Court topping its agenda.

Hamdan had submitted his resignation from Assembly membership in August 2026, citing "systematic defamatory online campaigns" that had damaged his reputation, and describing the accusations against him as "fabricated lies and false claims," adding that continuing in his membership risked hampering the Assembly's legislative work. Hamdan described his decision as "voluntary and responsible," motivated by "genuine concern for the nation" and a desire to preserve the Assembly's standing. Around 190 of the Assembly's 210 members attended the sitting.

The acceptance of the resignation followed the formation of a special committee that investigated the suspicions raised about Hamdan and heard his testimony, before the Assembly debated his resignation request on the floor and approved it, with some phrases deleted from the resignation letter; Nawar Najma, vice-chair of the Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee, said the Assembly had accepted the resignation formally but had reservations about phrases within it, such as Hamdan's references to "campaigns against him" and to "leaving with his head held high." Earlier, in June 2026, Hamdan had denied reports concerning his father's military rank in the former regime's army, explaining that his father had been a "former military lecturer" who had been arrested, tortured and discharged. At the same sitting, the Assembly adopted its internal budget. The acceptance of the resignation created a new vacancy within the presidential third, which could be filled by a presidential decree appointing former Kurdish leader Ilham Ahmad to the Assembly.

The Assembly also discussed, at the same sitting, three legislative proposals addressing exceptional laws issued under the former regime, framed as applying the principles of transitional justice and the provisions of the Constitutional Declaration:

• an amendment to the pensions law separating criminal penalties from retirement rights for those convicted on terrorism charges;
• a tax exemption, from taxes and transfer fees, for individuals whose confiscated property had been returned to them, covering the period between 15 March 2011 and 8 December 2024; and
• the repeal of Law No. 22 of 2012, which established the counter-terrorism court, with the Supreme Judicial Council to annul its unjust rulings and return property confiscated under it.

On 11 September 2026, sources inside the Assembly told the website Ultra Syria that the Assembly's Education Committee had summoned Education Minister Mohammed Abdul Rahman Turko to a hearing session scheduled for the following week, to discuss files relating to the education sector, chief among them the file of dismissed teaching and educational staff, as well as decisions on education policy and errors that had accompanied some procedures; this was framed as part of the Assembly's oversight role of inquiry and seeking clarification on ministry matters that had raised questions in the preceding period. The ministry had recently announced receiving more than 173,000 electronic applications through an app for securing teaching staff. The Assembly duly heard Education Minister Mohammed Abdul Rahman Turko at its sitting on Monday 14 September 2026.

On 16 September, the assembly unanimously approved a bill abolishing the Assad-era Counter-Terrorism Court and nullifying its legal rulings.

Fuel price increase and protests

On the evening of Saturday 13 September 2026, the government announced an increase in fuel prices of between 25% and 40%, attributing the decision to an "exceptional rise in the global cost of securing fuel" coinciding with maintenance work at the Baniyas refinery, and describing it as a temporary measure linked to exceptional circumstances. Widespread protests against the decision broke out on 13 and 14 September in several areas of Syria, including burning tyres and road blockages in the town of al-Shuhayl in the Deir ez-Zor countryside, protests by public-transport drivers in Raqqa and Tabqa, road blockages in front of fuel tankers in al-Hasakah, blocking of the international highway in Idlib and Maarat al-Numan, sit-ins in the towns of Mare', al-Bab and Azaz in the Aleppo countryside, and protests in Hama; protesters linked the decision to low monthly public-sector salaries, which do not exceed US$150, arguing that it burdened an economy that had "just emerged from 14 years of destruction."

On 14 September, the Assembly's bureau approved a request by MPA Iqbal Mansour, chair of the Energy Committee, to hold a hearing session with the energy minister, under Article 30 of the Constitutional Declaration and Article 168 of the Assembly's rules of procedure, to discuss the fuel-price bulletin issued and the reasons for and circumstances surrounding the increase; the hearing was set for Thursday 17 September 2026 at noon, at the Assembly's headquarters in Damascus.

Legislative agenda

On 10 September 2026, Asharq Al-Awsat reported on efforts by Assembly members and observers to speed up the legislative process and end what was described as "institutional chaos" stemming from the accumulation and overlap of the former regime's laws and legal norms. Members identified three main priorities for this phase: transitional justice and political isolation; redress, through returning to government employment those dismissed from their posts over their opposition to the former regime; and institutional legislation regulating the work of ministries and bodies. Among the urgent laws listed were draft legislation on weapons possession and combating crime, local administration and its subordinate councils, and the financial system of administrative units, in addition to legislation concerning the ministries of justice and civil service, information and press unions, agriculture and land expropriation, and sports and youth.

Finance Minister Mohammed Yosr Berne stated, on 8 August 2026, that his ministry had prepared, on the presidency's instructions, a comprehensive package of 39 financial draft laws, in addition to the draft law on the state's general budget for the 2027 fiscal year, covering the basic financial system, the new tax system and service fees, expressing hope that they would be discussed and adopted in the People's Assembly in the coming months; a joint meeting was held between the minister, the Speaker, the first deputy speaker and the secretary on 6 August 2026 to discuss the Assembly's own financial system and preparations for its budget bill.

Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais announced that a comprehensive draft law to confront domestic violence was ready and awaiting submission to the People's Assembly, comprising a full protection and prevention system, the creation of specialised police and judicial mechanisms for such cases, strengthened victim-protection procedures, and tougher penalties for perpetrators of domestic violence, calling it "an advanced step in developing the national legislative system to protect the family and strengthen social peace."

Speaker al-Awak said the transitional justice law, prepared by the National Commission for Transitional Justice, would be among the Assembly's priorities as soon as it reached it, and that it must address redress, accountability and corruption files in a manner consistent with the particularity of the Syrian case. Debate arose over the scope of transitional justice, since Decree No. 20 of 2025, which created the National Commission for Transitional Justice, confines its mandate to crimes and violations committed by the former regime between 1970 and 8 December 2024, raising questions about the fate of other files such as the crimes of the Islamic State, the missing and mass graves in Raqqa, and violations attributed to the period of Syrian Democratic Forces control. Lawyer and rights activist Menhel al-Ulw argued that the current legal framework does not prevent expanding the commission's mandate to cover these files, but that this would require either an explicit amendment to Decree No. 20, or including such an expansion in the forthcoming transitional justice law. It is worth noting that violations attributed to opposition factions were not mentioned among the transitional justice issues.

The "Syrian National Democratic Alliance," a bloc of 32 secular and liberal parties, currents and independent figures founded in November 2025, called for shortening the Assembly's term to one year instead of two and a half, and for giving priority to issuing a parties law, arguing that Syria cannot live without party and political life. The Alliance's leader, Mahmoud Marei, said the calls that emerged with the convening of the first sitting to steer clear of parties and blocs were confined to inside parliament, not outside it, and named the priorities of the phase as the transitional justice law, a parties law, a permanent constitution in place of the Constitutional Declaration, and a law regulating the judicial authority, in addition to calling for a comprehensive national dialogue conference. Researcher Samir al-Abdullah argued that the absence of parties from the Assembly in its current form did not amount to an indicator of the absence of political pluralism, given its temporary transitional character following more than five decades of one-party rule and 14 years of war, calling for speeding up the issuance of a modern parties law that would open the field to political activity; analyst Darwish Khalifa, for his part, argued that the absence of parties opened the door to political disputes moving into the street, suggesting the name "People's Assembly" itself be reconsidered given its association with the former regime's era, and replaced with a name such as "Assembly of Representatives," "Chamber of Deputies," or "Parliament."

Speaker al-Awak affirmed that preparing a draft permanent constitution is not among the People's Assembly's powers, since the Constitutional Declaration issued in March 2025 did not grant it this task, and that the Assembly would likewise not work on drafting an elections law or a law establishing parties, confining itself to drafting the laws needed by ministries and bodies to facilitate their work. This raised questions about which body would undertake, during the five-year transitional period, the drafting of the permanent constitution and the presidential, parliamentary and municipal election laws and the parties law, given that the People's Assembly itself was excluded from these tasks.

Minority representation

Women representation

The representation of women in the Assembly drew many criticisms, as it includes only 22 women, seven of whom arrived through the electoral bodies. Civil activist Ghalia al-Rahal said that presidential appointment might correct the immediate imbalance in representation, but could not substitute for women's right to stand for election and reach parliament by the will of voters, since an appointed woman remains "tied to the authority that appointed her"; she identified the main obstacles to Syrian women's political participation as a patriarchal culture that views politics as a male domain, weak parties and political life, the absence of direct elections, limited financial resources, continued political violence, the burdens of poverty, displacement and family care, and the marginalisation of independent women's organisations with genuine community experience. She noted that the transitional Constitutional Declaration acknowledged women's role but did not set a binding, clear guarantee for their representation, and that unless the permanent constitution and the elections law include a quota of no less than 30%, this representation — currently around 10%, against a Middle East and North Africa regional average of about 16.7% and a global average of about 27.5% — might continue to decline.

Judge Iman Shahoud argued that the new Assembly's diversity must not be confined to "numbers" and "appearance," but must produce meaningful policy; she described the arrival of 22 women members as "a positive step but not enough," stressing that what matters is women's ability to influence legislation and oversight through competence and independence rather than symbolic representation, and proposing transparent criteria for selecting candidates, expanding women's participation in the electoral bodies, and investing in training women leaders. Academic Najwa Bahjat Qassab, who was appointed to the Assembly, considered the transitional, foundational phase exceptional after sixty years in which "parliament lacked weight and purpose," calling on women to move beyond a narrow focus on women's issues and to engage across the Assembly's various committees, and viewing the appointment of a woman to the Assembly's bureau as a positive sign of the growing momentum for women's representation.

MPA Fatima al-Yousef, who lost 25 members of her family in the Khan Shaykhun chemical massacre of 2017, said "the era of symbolism is over," and that she did not believe in symbolic roles, adding: "My role is not to sit and applaud, but to turn the pain I lived through as one of the survivors of the chemical massacre into laws that protect people and prevent such a tragedy from happening again." She identified her legislative priorities as a comprehensive law protecting women from domestic violence and discrimination, labour legislation guaranteeing equal pay and maternity protection, representing victims of violence in documenting crimes, compensation and reconstruction, and educational and reproductive-health legislation to bring back girls who dropped out of school and combat child marriage. MPA Huda al-Atassi, of Homs Governorate, said the current phase was an important opportunity to prove that women are essential partners in legislation, oversight and policymaking rather than merely representatives of a social segment, and that the currently limited representation of women doubles the responsibility on women MPs.

Kurdish representation

The People's Assembly has 12 Kurdish members out of 210 (about 5.7% of its seats), three of them within the third appointed by the President. Kurdish parties and factions describe this proportion as weak and not reflective of the Kurds' true demographic weight in Syria. MPA Radwan Sido, representing Al-Hasakah Governorate and also a member of the legal office of the Kurdish National Council in Syria, said he did not believe Kurds would be able to achieve any demand or right through the voting mechanism "given how few of us there are in parliament," and that they needed to reach understandings with the rest of the Assembly's members and the government to secure Kurdish rights and redress the injustice against them, drawing on Presidential Decree No. 13 of 2026, affirming that they would make every effort to entrench Kurdish rights within the permanent constitution.

On 30 July 2026, MPA Fasla Youssef, representing Al-Hasakah, delivered a speech in Kurdish during the sitting debating the rules of procedure, after taking the collective oath had prevented her from swearing it in Kurdish as she had intended; she later said she had noticed there was room to speak in Kurdish, "so I delivered my speech in it," thanking the committee tasked with preparing the rules of procedure, the Assembly's leadership and her fellow MPs, a step that was met with warm applause and welcome inside the chamber.

MPA Alwan al-Ali, representing Al-Hasakah, spoke of a joint working room bringing together Kurdish members and representatives of the Christian community for coordination and consultation, including on voting in the election of the Assembly's leadership and debating the articles of the rules of procedure, and described relations between Arab and Kurdish MPs as distinguished despite the legacy of years of estrangement; he linked the file of Kurdish rights to Legislative Decree No. 13, issued on 16 January 2026, which considered the Kurds an integral part of the Syrian people, and to the gradual progress of integrating state institutions in Al-Hasakah Governorate. Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim al-Olabi, said that the People's Assembly, once fully formed, was the body that would decide, through its committees, on including Kurdish rights within the forthcoming constitution, not the government.

Assessments and criticism

Researcher Ibrahim al-Assil, in an analytical article for Foreign Policy magazine, argued that the People's Assembly is "a weak parliament by design," closely tied to the presidency and with relatively narrow representation, noting that its members — elected through indirect electoral bodies whose overseers the presidency appointed, and a third of them appointed directly by the President — had for the most part not run a genuine election campaign, and that none of them had previously served in an actual legislative body; he observed that the word "oversight" was practically never mentioned throughout the opening sitting, which was dominated by a focus on reconstruction and legislation rather than holding the government accountable.

In an opinion piece for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, writer Ali al-Abdullah asked whether the arrangements accompanying the formation of the Assembly and its committees were aimed at "building institutions for a state of institutions, or building institutions to institutionalise influence," arguing that the Assembly suffers from a "birth defect" given the composite formula by which it was formed — two-thirds through electoral bodies formed by a higher committee the President appointed, and a third appointed directly by him — which, in his account, made it subordinate to the very executive authority it is supposed to oversee. He linked the election of Abdul Hamid al-Awak as Speaker of the Assembly, who had previously chaired the legal committee that drafted the Constitutional Declaration, to al-Awak's subsequent statement that drafting a permanent constitution and holding the presidency and government accountable were not among the Assembly's powers, viewing this as an embodiment of the executive authority's control over the legislative track; he also pointed to the naming of the "Diplomatic and Consular Affairs Committee" instead of the customary "Foreign Affairs Committee," describing it as a "legal pretext" for keeping foreign policy off the Assembly's agenda.

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reached a similar conclusion, arguing that excluding the foreign-affairs file from legislative oversight revealed a concentration of power in the hands of the presidency, the foreign ministry and the security services. Officials and MPs, for their part, defended the Assembly's design as suited to the particular nature of the transitional phase; researcher Samir al-Abdullah argued that the absence of parties from a temporary legislative body formed after more than five decades of one-party rule did not necessarily mean the absence of political pluralism, but rather reflected its time-limited transitional nature.