Tartus (Arabic: طرطوس) 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) 1973 Mahmoud Hasan(N/A) Iskandar Ataki(N/A) Issa Khaddour(N/A) Ali Ahmad Ali(N/A) Michel Isa Jurjus(N/A) Ali al-Zaza(N/A) Sarem Mahmoud Youssef(N/A) Muharram Tayyara(N/A) Ahmad Harfush(N/A) Hanaa al-Hamwi(N/A) 10 seats 1977 Muhammad Mayhoub(N/A) Aziz Suleiman(N/A) Marwan al-Hamwi(N/A) Issa al-Khoury(N/A) rowspan="2" Muhsen Bilal(Ba'ath) Sulafa Dib(N/A) Hamid al-Mahmoud(N/A) Najm al-Din al-Saleh(N/A) 1981 Youssef Mardash(N/A) Muhammad Hashim Ali(N/A) Ali Salim Ibrahim(N/A) Muhammad Ghassan Tayyara(N/A) Muhammad Tawfiq Hassan(N/A) Waheeb Salim Tannous(N/A) Nawal al-Muhammad(N/A) Muhammad Ghassan Othman(N/A) 1986 Izz al-Din Nasser(N/A) Sharif Hassan(N/A) Youssef Youssef(N/A) Ahmad Hassan(Ba'ath) Mahmoud Diyoub(N/A) Mustafa Najm(N/A) Muhammad Zugheibi(N/A) 1990 Abd al-Latif Mahrez(N/A) Nadim al-Kanj(N/A) Abd al-Munim Bayasi(N/A) Yahya al-Khaddam(N/A) Jamila Ali(N/A) Suleiman Khaddour(N/A) Nazih Bashour(N/A) Ali Dawoud(N/A) Mohsen Imran(N/A) 1994 Suleiman Muhammad(N/A) Amal Mardash(N/A) Abdallah Hussein(N/A) Kharfan al-Heifi(N/A) Ramadan Atiya(N/A) Muhammad Saleh(N/A) Mahmoud Ali Youssef(N/A) N/A 1995 Mikhail Hajjar(N/A) Wajih al-Sheikh(N/A) 1998 Muhammad Mayhoub(N/A) Nasr Mahrez(N/A) Mahmoud Afif(N/A) Waad Khaddam(N/A) Inam Abbas(N/A) Suhail Zidan(N/A) Imad al-Din Suleiman(N/A) Abboud Abboud(N/A) Ahmad Azil(N/A) rowspan="2" Muhammad Suleiman(Ba'ath) Mohsen Imran(N/A)2003 Hisham Tayyara(N/A) rowspan="2" Ibrahim Suleiman(Ba'ath) Riham Bashour(N/A) Izz al-Din Imran(N/A) Najah Younes(N/A) Ahmad Ghazil(N/A) Wajih Hashem(N/A) George Jabbour(N/A) rowspan="6" Khadr Hussein(Ind.)2007 Ali Ali(Ba'ath) Fahima Arous(Ba'ath) Abd al-Karim Mustafa(Ba'ath) rowspan="6" Rami Saleh(Ba'ath) Numan Hamoud(Ind.) Imran Imran al-Zawi(Ba'ath) Bassam Dakrouj(Ba'ath) Mona al-Dayaa(Ba'ath) Mai Issa(SUP) Jamal Akrah(SUP) Ahmad Fahl(Ind.)2012 rowspan="4" Basil Issa(Ba'ath) Sameer Jawhara(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Sabah Ahmed(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Muhammad Wahoud(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Maha al-Omar(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Suhail Khadr(Ind.) rowspan="2" Ali Nedda(Ind.) rowspan="6" Tony Hanna(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Issam Khalil(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Youssef Asaad(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Mahmoud Bilal(Ind.) 2015 Bassem Ahmad(Ba'ath)2016 rowspan="2" Khaled Khaddouj(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Dima Suleiman(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Noura Hassan(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ashwaq Abbas(Ind.) rowspan="2" Enas al-Malouhi(SSNP) rowspan="3" Ayman Bilal(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Khair al-Din al-Sayyid(Ba'ath) Saer Ibrahim(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Nasser Suleiman(Ba'ath) 2018 Qutaiba Badr(Ba'ath)2020 rowspan="3" Siham al-Othman(Ba'ath) Ahmad Ali Hasan(Ba'ath) Abbas Izz al-Din Abbas(Ba'ath) Muhammad Jari(Ba'ath) Rania Hassan(Ba'ath) Suhail Khadr(Ind.) Nasr Hassan(Ba'ath) Akram Abd al-Jalil(Ba'ath) Maan Muhammad(DSUP) Mahmoud Bilal(Ind.)2024 rowspan="2" Bassel Issa(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Modar al-Aji(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Younes Hamdoush(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ahmad Ali(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Alaa Muhammad(Ind.) rowspan="2" Qutaiba Badr(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Fadi Abbas(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Ahmad Fahl(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Bayan Othman(Ba'ath) rowspan="2" Mahmoud Afif(SCP-U) rowspan="2" Sanan Dargam(Ind.) 2024 Vacant
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