Deir ez-Zor (Arabic: دير الزور) was an electoral district used to elect members of the Syrian People's Assembly between 1973 and 2025.
Electoral system
The electoral system used to elect the People's Assembly was introduced in 1973 and remained in use until the assembly's dissolution in 2025. Each governorate formed a single, large electoral district, except for Aleppo Governorate, which was divided into two districts: the city of Aleppo and the rural districts of Aleppo Governorate. Within each district, seats were awarded on a block-vote basis, with the candidates receiving the largest number of votes taking all of the seats allocated to it, and the assembly was composed of representatives of two sectors, "workers and peasants" and "other sectors of the people", with the former guaranteed at least half of its seats nationally. The number of seats, and their distribution among districts, was left to the president of the republic to set by decree rather than being fixed in law; the total was raised from 186 to 195 in 1981 and from 195 to 250 in 1990, after which the distribution among the fifteen electoral districts was not changed.
All Syrian citizens aged 18 and over were entitled to vote, other than those under legal guardianship, those with a mental illness affecting their legal capacity, and those convicted of a felony or a "dishonourable" misdemeanour, while serving members of the armed forces and police were barred from voting and from standing as candidates; candidates were further required to be at least 25 years old and to have held Syrian nationality for at least five years, a period raised to ten under the 2011 and 2014 electoral laws. During the 2011 reform of the electoral law, the replacement of this system was discussed because of its weak representativeness, but the large-district, block-vote system was retained; the reform instead moved the administration of elections from the Ministry of Interior and provincial governors to an independent Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, a structure carried over into a further law passed in 2014 that consolidated the rules for presidential, parliamentary and local-council elections into a single statute.
Beyond being considered unrepresentative — a majoritarian, large-district system of a kind rejected by most electoral systems worldwide — the system has also been criticised for the unevenness of its distribution of seats between governorates. Based on the number of registered voters at the 2012 election, the average was around 59,000 voters per seat nationally, but the ratio varied considerably: about 37,800 voters per seat in Damascus and 51,500 in Tartus, compared with 71,700 in Al-Hasakah and 69,500 in the rural districts of Aleppo Governorate, with no mechanism beyond a presidential decree governing the size of constituencies or the allocation of seats between them.
Members +Elections MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) 1973 Abd Allah al-Rawi(N/A) Hasan al-Umr al-Ali(N/A) Anam Abdullah al-Hijr(N/A) Adnan al-Juma(N/A) Suleiman Uthman al-Akla(N/A) Rayyis al-Fayyad(N/A) Qusay al-Sheikh(N/A) Abd al-Aziz Ayash(N/A) Fu'ad al-Yasin(N/A) Sallum al-Abdullah(N/A) 10 seats 1977 Mohsen al-Mazid(N/A) Hassan al-Ashish(N/A) Jarad al-Khalaf(N/A) Zoubaa al-Akala(N/A) Faisal al-Najras(N/A) Suleiman al-Hassan(N/A) rowspan="4" Abboud al-Hafl(N/A) Shukriya Abd al-Ghani(N/A) Fawzi al-Qanbar(N/A) Jumaa al-Abdoun(N/A) 11 seats 1981 Ghassan al-Abd al-Rajab(N/A) Nuri al-Sayyah(N/A) Abd al-Qahhar Ubaid(N/A) Abd al-Karim Abboud(N/A) Ibtisam al-Taha al-Husseini(N/A) Walid Shuaibi(N/A) Jassem al-Bashir(N/A) Fayyad Murair(N/A) 1984 Ahmad al-Fayyad(N/A) 1986 Tariq Safif(N/A) Mujhim al-Muhammad al-Dandil(N/A) Badi al-Hazzaa al-Ali(N/A) Abd al-Jabbar al-Mardoud(N/A) rowspan="2" Ammash Jdeia(Ba'ath) 1988 rowspan="11" Khalil al-Hafl(Ind.) 1990 Zahra al-Jassem(N/A) Ahmad al-Hammad(N/A) Najm al-Abdallah(N/A) Jassem al-Assad(N/A) Abd al-Aziz al-Hamada(N/A) Nawaf al-Bashir(N/A) Zuhair al-Hamdi(N/A) Riyad al-Abdallah(N/A) Hamad Sheikh al-Jilayat(N/A) 1994 Abdallah Safif(N/A) Abd al-Majid al-Marzouq(N/A) Naji al-Sheikh Fares(N/A) Faisal al-Sheikh Fayyad al-Nasser(N/A) Fateh al-Zawi(N/A) Ahmad al-Muhammad(N/A) Ramzi Muhammad Ghazi(N/A) rowspan="2" Ammash Jdeia(Ba'ath) rowspan="6" Faisal al-Najras(Ind.) 1995 Daoud al-Shaher(N/A) 1998 Adeesh al-Ghadban(N/A) Abd al-Samad Nouwara(N/A) Omar Salibi(N/A) Ayman Raja al-Muhammad al-Dandal(N/A) Hamad al-Sheikh al-Jalilat(N/A) Abd al-Razzaq al-Awwad(N/A) rowspan="3" Abboud al-Saleh(Ba'ath) Ragheb al-Ali al-Soufi(N/A) Najm al-Din Jawish al-Kharit(N/A)2003 rowspan="2" Hadiya Abbas(Ba'ath) Nasser Ubayd al-Nasser(N/A) Ziad Baaj(N/A) Saleh al-Bashir(N/A) Hamoud al-Hussein(N/A) rowspan="6" Fayyad al-Sheikh(Ba'ath) Fouad Battah(N/A) Abd al-Razzaq al-Awwad(N/A) 2006 Nayef al-Sheikh Fares(N/A)2007 rowspan="4" Hamid Sheihan(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Ahmad al-Muhammad(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Riad al-Ismail(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Farha al-Alwan(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ramadan al-Khalaf(Ind.) rowspan="3" Faisal Sheikh Fayyad(Ind.) rowspan="4" Najm al-Abdallah(Ind.) rowspan="4" Ishaq al-Saleh al-Jassem(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Ghassan al-Yousef(NCP) rowspan="4" Sobhi Khadr al-Hammadi(SUP) rowspan="4" Muhammad al-Futaih(Ba'ath) 2008 rowspan="3" Safouk al-Najras(Ind.) 2009 rowspan="2" Ziad al-Khalaf(Ind.) 2010 Mahna Sheikh Fayyad(Ind.)2012 rowspan="3" Ibtisam al-Dibs(Ba'ath) rowspan="8" Burhan al-Abd al-Wahhab(Ba'ath) rowspan="5" Abd al-Salam al-Dahmoush(Ba'ath) rowspan="5" Maan al-Abboud(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Jassim al-Badr(Ind.) Turki al-Zayed al-Mustafa(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Muhanna Sheikh Fayyad al-Nasser(Ind.) rowspan="5" Najm al-Salman(Ind.) rowspan="3" Riyadh al-Abdullah(Arab Socialist Movement) rowspan="3" Asaad al-Muhammad(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Bandar al-Daif(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Dir' al-Dandal(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Mujhim al-Sahu(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Riyadh al-Issa(Ind.) 2013 rowspan="2" Jihad al-Shekheir(Ind.) 2014 rowspan="3" Sattam al-Dandal(Ba'ath)2016 rowspan="5" Muhammad al-Raja(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Muhammad Jadallah(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ibrahim al-Daer(Ind.) rowspan="2" Muhammad al-Saad al-Mashali(ASUP) rowspan="3" Taha al-Khalifah(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Mahmoud Hussein al-Hassan(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ibtisam al-Taha al-Husseini(Ind.) rowspan="2" Hadiya Abbas(Ba'ath) Hamadi al-Hassani(Ba'ath) 2017 rowspan="4" Aytan al-Aytan(Ba'ath)2020 rowspan="3" Ali Adel al-Hajj Khalifah(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Mahmoud al-Rayyes(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Bashar al-Mutlaq(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Mayyada al-Ali(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Muhanna Sheikh Fayyad al-Nasser(Ind.) rowspan="2" Adnan al-Jum'ah(SUP) rowspan="3" Abd al-Aziz al-Hussein(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Maryam al-Mutras(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Sheikh al-Kharfan(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Madloul al-Aziz(Ind.) 2020 rowspan="3" Yasser al-Salama(Ba'ath) 2022 Bashar Shubat(SUP)2024 Ahmad al-Shattat(Ba'ath) Sumer Zahir(Ba'ath) Feras al-Jaham(Ba'ath) Maisara al-Ahmad(Ba'ath) Ahmad al-Naser(Ba'ath) Ali Haj Khalifeh(Ba'ath) Khalifa Hamd(Ind.) Maram al-Askar(Ba'ath) Khaled al-Kamsh(NCP) Bashir al-Jarrad(Ba'ath) Ibrahim al-Shaher(Independent)
References