The interim president of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, announced the formation of a guardian government that will guide the country on Saturday through a crucial transition while it emerges from over 50 years of dictatorship under the domain of the iron fist of the Assad family.
Al-Shara, which led the coalition of rebel forces that overturned the Assad regime, appointed a series of new ministers, swearing in each in front of an audience of several hundred dignitaries in a lively room in the presidential palace on a hill above Damascus.
His government included some expert officials and a woman, but appointed close allies for important defense ministries, foreign and internal affairs.
The rebels who ousted President Bashar al-Assad in December acted as Syria’s actual authority. Al-Shara has been appointed President to Interim and supervised a transition government.
Among the first promises of Al-Shara was to form a guardian government by March that would manage the country until the elections are held. He said they could be needed to keep the elections up to four years because the country is in disorder.
The composition of the new government announced on Saturday, including the positions of the key cabinet, has been widely seen as a litmus test for the fact that Mr. Al-Shara would have extended any real power beyond his close-knit circle of allies and committed himself to creating an inclusive government that represents all the disparate religious and ethnic groups of Syria.
The guardian government will be in power for five years, allowing the adoption of a permanent constitution and the elections to be held, as detailed in a provisional constitution adopted this month.
The announcement on Saturday suggested that Mr. Al-Shara partially bowed to the pressures of Syrian society and minority groups, as well as requests by foreign governments that are considering the lifting of sanctions.
In a clear mention of those critics, Al-Shara replaced his brother as Minister of Health and has appointed two popular activists to lead the ministries. Raed Al-Saleh, head of the organization for the civil protection of white helmets, has been appointed minister of catastrophes and emergencies and Hind Kabawat, who helped organize a recent national conference for dialogue, has been appointed minister of social affairs-the woman named.
And in an important gesture for the Kurdish minority of the country, Al-Shara has appointed a Kurdish as Minister of Education, a ministry that will be carefully looked at how he manages the rewriting of the educational system of the Assad regime.
Many Arab and Western leaders have said that the restoration of complete links with the new government of Syria – including relief from the punishment of western sanctions – would only occur if a political process that reflected the ethnic and religious diversity of the country had been created.
While led the transition authority, Al-Shara had put the allies in key positions of the government, effectively transplanting the provincial administration that once guided in the city of Idlib held by the rebels.
The announcement of the new government arrives per month After Al-Shara has convened a conference for Syrians from all over the country to share inputs and recommendations for a provisional administration.
The pressure on Mr. Al-Shara to make changes to his government grew up at home and abroad after violence in the coastal region of Syria this month. The clashes between the remains of the Assad regime and the government’s security forces have broken out. More than 1,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians, according to the war monitoring group, the Syrian observatory for human rights.
Al-Shara has also obtained important agreements with the Kurdish guided militia, which is supported by the United States and controls much of the north-eastern Syria and with the leaders of Druse in the south of the country.
The constitutional declaration announced this month was developed by a committee of experts led by a professor of constitutional law. He maintains the strong presidential system, granting executive power to the president and the power to appoint the judges of the Supreme Court and a third of the members of the Parliament.
But he also established a separation of the government branches and an independent judiciary that is “subject only to the law”, which represents a break from the authoritarian state managed by Mr. Al-Assad.
The constitutional declaration also maintains a clause with the old constitution that the president must be Muslim. It also guarantees freedom of opinion, expression, information, publication and printing.
Some groups have criticized the temporary constitution for not having recognized the range of ethnic and religious groups of Syria or of having established a system of sharing power. But other analysts and democracy activists have described it as a good provisional document that would keep stability and would allow to discuss further changes.
Ibrahim Draji, professor of law at Damascus University, recently declared in a public discussion in the city that a three -month limit for a state of emergency and other restrictions on military and security services were new guarantees against a return to the dictatorship.
But another lawyer at the event, Faeq Huaiji, co-founder of a Syrian non-governmental organization, the center of equal citizenship, has raised different concerns, including the temporary constitution did not provide for adequate checks on the president.
Muhammad Haj Kadour Contributed relationships.