Friday, March 25, 2011
Editorial

Syrian President Bashar Assad has announced a series of steps that he hopes will quell the popular unrest in his country, which has exploded in the town of Daraa and is simmering elsewhere.

Assad intends to move ahead with a number of long-awaited steps: dropping the country’s State of Emergency Law, drafting a new law on political parties, fighting corruption, creating jobs and raising public sector salaries.
Assad also ordered the release of people rounded up during the recent spate of unrest, which has claimed dozens of lives and indicated that Syria is not immune to the winds of Arab revolution sweeping the region.

Syrians are sophisticated people who will quickly see through the latest stance by the regime, announced by spokesperson Bouthaina Shaaban Thursday, if it turns out to be another case of promises, promises. After the spilling of blood, the situation has gone too far for the public to sit quietly back and hope for the best. For the most part, Syrians are satisfied with the regime’s foreign policy; it’s the domestic policy that generates serious discontent, and this must be addressed.

Syria has a round of parliamentary elections later this year, meaning that tangible change must come in the next few weeks or months, in the form of a real move away from the Baath Party-dominated electoral process, one that respects the will of intelligence organizations more than the will of the people.

Assad has given notice that he has understood the level of frustration and anger among his people. When he first came to power more than a decade ago, the president let it be known that he favored such reform moves himself.
But the string of events that followed – the Al-Aqsa intifada, the Sept. 11 attacks, and the Western-led war against Iraq – gave the regime the “ideal” opportunity to sidestep any moves toward change. Instead, it was easy to cite the “critical regional conditions” as an excuse for postponing any such moves.

Today, it’s not so much a case of the State of Emergency in Syria having to go – the entire region is in a state of emergency, whether the leaders like it or not. If the latest batch of promises by the Syrian regime proves to be a set of cosmetic measures, and not sincere moves toward reform, the violence will merely wane for a while, and then explode again, with even worse consequences.

If Syrian officials were content to talk about external conditions in the past, as a justification for “taking it slow,” they should read the conditions in the Arab world and come up with a new orientation – it’s time to move quickly, and seriously, in the direction of reform.