Damascus: Speaker of the Syrian Parliament Hadieh Abbas, a member of the ruling Baath Party, was fired on Thursday night after 164 deputies petitioned for her removal, claiming that she had “fallen back on her duties”.
For weeks the state-run Damascus press has been lobbying against her, accusing her of preventing journalists from covering the parliamentary sessions and of violating presidential orders by allowing deputies to tint their car windows.
A colourless figure with no political history, Abbas became the Speaker in mid-2016, mainly because she was a woman but and belonged to the oil-rich city of Deir Al Zour.
She was the first woman and the first non-Damascene to assume the Speaker’s job since parliament was established in Syria in 1919. Abbas’ removal in such a manner raised many eyebrows, since no parliament Speaker has been fired since the Baath Party seized power in 1963, aborting Syria’s healthy democratic culture and packing the chamber with Baathists and their allies.
Hadieh Abbas was not available for comments when contacted by Gulf News.
One acquaintance from her native Deir Al Zor told Gulf News on conditions of anonymity: “Some feminists are trying to say that she was dismissed because she was a vulnerable woman. This is not true. She was dismissed because she was a terrible Speaker who lacked charisma or the slightest respect for the position she was holding. She knew nothing about the post or its history and had little respect for the deputies.”
“I am now the interim Speaker,” said Abbas’ deputy Najdat Esmail Anzour, a celebrated filmmaker turned politician who was voted into parliament in 2016. Anzour was elected as an independent candidate and he will lead a 15-day transition period until a new Speaker is elected. Anzour is the first non-Baathist to assume the post of Speaker since 1963 and the first Circassian in the history of Syria.
Born in 1954 in the northern city of Aleppo, Anzour learnt filmmaking from his father, a famed cinema director and maker of silent films in 1920s. Anzour rose to fame with his 1993 television drama Nihayet Rajul Shujaa starring Ayman Zeidan and Suzanne Najm Al Deen.
He got the pan-Arab attention with Dubai-produced epic Al Jawareh. In the mid-1990s he made a soap opera about Syrian-Ottoman history during First World War, also starring Aymand Zeidan.
In 2010 Anzour adapted Algerian novelist Ahlam Mesteghami’s classic Zakirat Al Jasad for his TV drama, starring Syrian star Jamal Suleiman (now a member of the Syrian opposition). It was produced by Abu Dhabi TV.
