Latakia (Arabic: اللاذقية) 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) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) MPA(Party) 1973 Ahmad Adhima(N/A) Jurji Khoury(N/A) Abd al-Khalq Hajuz(N/A) Abdullah Banshi(N/A) Abd al-Karim Ammar(N/A) Mahmoud Ajil(N/A) Mahmoud Musa(N/A) Ahmad Khaddur(N/A) rowspan="9" Jamil al-Assad(Ba'ath) Salma Najib(N/A) Ghazi Khadra(N/A) Muhammad Naasan Deeb(N/A) Muhammad Kahila(N/A) 13 seats 1977 Tawfiq Darwish(N/A) Nasr Saqour(N/A) Ahmad Madaniyya(N/A) Muhammad Jaafar(N/A) Hassan Abu Zaid(N/A) Ahmad Darji(N/A) Suleiman Saqr(N/A) Faisal Summaq(N/A) Ahmad Abu Musa(N/A) Abdallah Zaitoun(N/A) 1981 Rafiq Darwish(N/A) Farid Janauro(N/A) Ibrahim al-Lawza(N/A) Omar Ashour(N/A) Tawfiq Ibrahim(N/A) Adnan Khuzeim(N/A) Wafaa Snain(N/A) 1984 Mustafa Abd al-Halim(N/A) 1986 Karim al-Shaibani(N/A) Muhammad Saad(N/A) 1990 Suhail Kanaan(N/A) Layla Ghalawenji(N/A) Bahjat Saad(N/A) Sari Haddad(N/A) Basil Youssef(N/A) Muhammad Ali Nasser(N/A) Fayez Othman(N/A) 1994 Haifa Saqr(N/A) Jamila Shreiki(N/A) Abd al-Karim Badawi(N/A) Fuad Mathbout(N/A) Anan Shabou(N/A) Suhail Shahadeh(N/A) Fuad Zoubari(N/A) Omar Hazim(N/A) 1998 Nawfal Nawfal(ASUP) Fares Iskandar(N/A) Youssef Hassan(N/A) Farouk Shamout(N/A) Muhammad Fakhri al-Sayyid(N/A) Nizar Ismail(N/A) Al-Mundhir Maarouf(N/A) Suhair Reis(N/A) Mouaffaq Makkiya(N/A) Muhammad Ali Nasser(N/A) Mahdi Khairbek(N/A)2003 Yahya Ayyash(N/A) rowspan="3" Adnan Beitar(Ba'ath) Ahmad Diwani(N/A) Abd al-Qadir Bazido(N/A) Bilal Mathbout(N/A) rowspan="6" Fawaz Nassour(Ind.) Mahmoud Alio(N/A) rowspan="3" Ibrahim Baddour(Ba'ath) Labib Alia(N/A) Josephine Nassar(N/A) Namir Ghanem(N/A) Suhail Othman(N/A) 2005 rowspan="2" Jaafar al-Khair(Ba'ath)2007 Kamal Salameh(Ba'ath) Hassan Ali(Ba'ath) Mahasin Fateh(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Muhammad Ajil(Ba'ath) Saer Qudsiya(Ba'ath) Zakaria Salwayeh(Ind.) Salim Abboud(Ba'ath) Fatima Fwaiti(Ba'ath) Khaldoun Qassam(Ba'ath) Nawfal Nawfal(ASUP) Abd al-Razzaq Darji(SCP-B) Sari Haddad(SUP) Mahdi Khairbek(Ind.)2012 Saadallah Safia(Ba'ath) rowspan="3" Sameer al-Khatib(Ba'ath) rowspan="4" Ammar al-Assad(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Fayhaa Tarifli(Ba'ath) Nadim Mansoura(Ba'ath) Wafaa Maala(Ba'ath) Badih Saqour(Ind.) Iskandar Jarada(SCP-B) rowspan="4" Ayham Jreikos(Ba'ath) Ali Muhammad(Ba'ath) Kamel Zantout(Ba'ath) Muhammad Bilal(Ba'ath) Maysaa Saleh(Ba'ath) Nabhan Issa(Ba'ath) Ali Makhlouf(Ind.)2016 rowspan="3" Iskandar Haddad(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Bassem Sudan(Ba'ath) Zuhair Ramadan(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Mustafa Kheirbek(Ba'ath) Nabil Saleh(Ind.) Sameer Nassir(SSNP) Samer Shiha(Ba'ath) Mazen Omran(Ba'ath) Nizar al-Skif(Ba'ath) Adnan al-Zarf(Ind.) Nour Shaghri(Ind.)2020 Maysaa Salih(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Rasem Masri(Ind.) Hasan Kousa(Ba'ath) Malek Habib(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ayman Ahmad(Ba'ath) Thaer Hassan(Ba'ath) Bashir Ghalawunji(Until 2024: Ba'ath From 2024: ASUP) rowspan="2" Nabil Elias(Ind.) rowspan="2" Zain al-Abidin Abbas(Ind.)2024 Rafiq al-Alouni(Ba'ath) Eva Hor(Ba'ath) Yousef Shahin(Ba'ath) Haitham Omran(Ba'ath) Sobhi Abbas(Ind.) Jihad Barakat(Ba'ath) Razaan Murtada(Ba'ath) Ahmad Hamidoush(Ba'ath) Amer Ghareeb(Ba'ath)
References