Some thoughts on a mundane Baath event
By Ammar Abdulhamid
Special to The Daily Star
Monday, June 06, 2005
Syria has been abuzz with all sorts of nasty and hopeful rumors
regarding the Baath Party congress that will begin today. Some predict
that a virtual coup will take place as a result. Others, claiming to
present a more sober assessment of the potential outcome, assert that
only a few, albeit important, reform measures will be adopted. But these
measures, they argue, are simply bound to pave the way for more critical
developments in the years to come. "Years" being the operative word
here.
However, increasingly, and for those who are truly sober, the upcoming
congress promises to present just another opportunity for Syria's "wise
leaders" to commit a major screw up. After all, it has been months since
they have committed such a faux pas and they are not in the habit of
making us wait for long. In this respect, our leaders have never failed
to live up to our expectations. If this sounds facetious, it's probably
because the circumstances more than justify recourse to facetiousness.
There is simply no other way to deal with those who still think that the
key to change in Syria lies in the hands of the corrupt officials who
paved the way to the miserable state of affairs the country finds itself
in today.
The Baath, both as an ideological construct and an instrumental one, has
long failed Syria and its people in numerous ways: It failed to protect
the territorial integrity of the state by losing the Golan Heights to
Israel in 1967, and by never managing to get it back, whether through
force or negotiations. It transformed a rich country into an
impoverished one, where a considerable chunk of the population is living
below the poverty line. It failed, its populist policies
notwithstanding, to establish an adequate and modernizable educational
system and health care programs. It failed to safeguard social peace
between the various constituent communities in the country. It twice led
Syria into a period of international isolation - once in the late 1980s,
and again now. Under its rule, state corruption has reached
unprecedented levels, with most top Baath figures taking an active part
in this.
How can such a party, then, be expected to provide any solutions? In
other words, how can those who charted our way into the quagmire be able
to chart a way out? If modern history has taught us anything, it is that
corrupt and autocratic parties like the Baath have never been about
"resurrection," the word's meaning in Arabic, nor have they been "resurrectible."
If reform is indeed what's on the mind of Syria's leadership, then the
Baath congress will prove to be an exercise in futility, especially when
considering that not a single reformer won in the elections preceding
the congress. What will in fact take place is an attempt to reinvent
Syria's authoritarian system, as many dissidents have rightly pointed
out. Yet even here the regime will fail, for none of the people involved
in the reinvention process can really carry it through, or produce an
outcome that satisfies outside parties. For let's not forget that the
real impetus for reform came from external pressures, and as such, the
congress is really aimed at an external audience.
The domestic audience, on the other hand, consists of two groups of
Syrians: those who have power to influence the reform process, but who
tend to be high-ranking regime members who are more interested in regime
survival than reform; and those who are seriously interested in reform,
be they dissidents or other citizens, but who are simply too
disorganized and weak to have a say in the matter. In fact, no one is
consulting them. The whole purpose of the Baath congress is to present
them with a fait accompli that they will be expected to endorse, perhaps
via some popular referendum that will most likely generate the usual 99
percent favorable outcome, given that the factors of fear and wishful
thinking are still involved.
For so long as Syrians keep hoping against hope that this regime is
still capable of representing a viable option, they will continue to
endorse it. The alternative, they fear, could be chaos, which represents
a greater fear for the Syrians than authoritarianism and corruption.
But fear is beside the point. Wishing the regime to remain viable will
not make it so. As such, its coming up with a package of reform promises
is not the major issue. The key is implementation. However, since the
successful implementation of promised reform requires know-how, skills,
a guiding vision, a sense of leadership, pragmatism and gumption (the
very qualities that have been missing from Syria for the last five
years), the congress will prove to be the long-awaited beginning of the
long-awaited end.
The bankruptcy of the regime will be impossible to hide after the
congress ends, leaving the Syrian people with a clear choice to make: to
take their destiny into their hands, or leave it in the hands of others.
Fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the
cold war, Syrians will finally have to face the hard truth of it all:
that change paving the way to freedom depends on their own ability to
seize the initiative and not allow it to remain in the hands of the
regime.
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