Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, announced late Saturday the formation of a caretaker government that will lead the country through a crucial transition as it emerges from more than 50 years of dictatorship under the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule.
Mr. al-Shara, who led the coalition of rebel forces that overthrew the Assad regime, appointed a bevy of new ministers, swearing in each before an audience of several hundred dignitaries in a brightly lit hall in the presidential palace on a hill above Damascus.
His government included some experienced officials, and one woman — but he appointed close allies to the important ministries of defense, foreign affairs and interior.
The rebels who ousted President Bashar al-Assad in December have since been acting as Syria’s de facto authorities. Mr. al-Shara was named interim president and oversaw a transitional government.
Among Mr. al-Shara’s early promises was to form a caretaker government by March that would run the country until elections can be held. He has said that it could take up to four years to hold elections because the country is in disarray.
The makeup of the new government announced on Saturday, including key cabinet positions, was widely seen as a litmus test for whether Mr. al-Shara would extend any real power beyond his tight-knit circle of allies and make good on his pledge to create an inclusive government that represents all of Syria’s disparate religious and ethnic groups.
The caretaker government will be in power for five years, allowing for a permanent constitution to be adopted and elections to be held, as detailed in an interim constitution adopted this month.
The announcement on Saturday suggested that Mr. al-Shara was partially bowing to pressure from Syrian society and minority groups, as well as to demands from foreign governments that are considering lifting sanctions.
In a clear nod to those critics, Mr. al-Shara replaced his brother as minister of health, and appointed two popular activists to lead ministries. Raed al-Saleh, the head of the White Helmets civil defense organization, was made minister of disasters and emergencies, and Hind Kabawat, who helped organize a recent national dialogue conference, was named minister of social affairs — the lone woman appointee.
And in an important gesture to the country’s Kurdish minority, Mr. al-Shara appointed a Kurd as minister of education, a ministry that will be closely watched for how it handles the rewriting of the Assad regime’s education system.
Many Arab and Western leaders have said the restoration of full ties with Syria’s new government — including relief from punishing Western sanctions — would happen only if a political process that reflected the country’s ethnic and religious diversity was created.
While leading the transitional authority, Mr. al-Shara had placed allies in key government positions, effectively transplanting the provincial administration he once led in the rebel-held city of Idlib.
The announcement of the new government comes a month after Mr. al-Shara convened a conference for Syrians from across the country to share input and recommendations for an interim administration.
Pressure on Mr. al-Shara to make changes to his government grew at home and abroad after violence in Syria’s coastal region this month. Clashes erupted between remnants of the Assad regime and government security forces. More than 1,000 people were killed, many of them civilians, according to the war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Mr. al-Shara has also secured important agreements with the Kurdish-led militia, which is backed by the United States and controls much of northeastern Syria, and with Druse leaders in the south of the country.
The constitutional declaration that was announced this month was drawn up by a committee of experts led by a constitutional law professor. It retains the strong presidential system, granting executive power to the president and the power to appoint judges of the Supreme Court and a third of the members of parliament.
But it also set out a separation of branches of government and an independent judiciary that is “subject only to the law,” representing a break from the authoritarian state run by Mr. al-Assad.
The constitutional declaration also keeps a stipulation from the old constitution that the president must be a Muslim. It also guarantees freedom of opinion, expression, information, publication and press.
Some groups have criticized the temporary constitution for not recognizing Syria’s range of ethnic and religious groups or laying out a system of power sharing. But other analysts and democracy activists have described it as a good interim document that would maintain stability and allow time to debate further changes.
Ibrahim Draji, a law professor at Damascus University, said recently in a public discussion in the city that a three-month limit for a state of emergency and other restrictions on the military and security services were new safeguards against a return to dictatorship.
But another lawyer at the event, Faeq Huaiji, a co-founder of a Syrian nongovernmental organization, the Equal Citizenship Center, raised several concerns, including that the temporary constitution did not provide for adequate checks on the president.
Muhammad Haj Kadour contributed reporting.