Bashar's Syria: The Regime and its Strategic Worldview Shmuel Bar ...

388 S. Barwould allow the younger generation to come to the fore, and for “self-criticism,” purgingthe party of “flaws, exploitation, and interests” and of those who had “harmed the partyand the public morality and have contributed to the creation of an image unbecoming to theparty due to their personal or family behavior and due to their lack of integrity.” 78Despite the disappointment of the elections, the Congress was preceded by rumorsthat it would make “courageous decisions” and Bashar’s own declaration that the Congresswould be “the greatest leap in the history of Syria.” The Congress was expected to dealparticularly with the bleak domestic scene, 79 though it was also widely expected that theresolutions of the Congress would change the very essence of the party and of its holdon the regime. Some of the more far-reaching specific expectations that were voiced—including by delegates to the Congress included. 80 A new party law would permit: theformation of political parties outside of the NPF, as long as they are not based on “ethnicity,religion or regionalism” (i.e., neither Islamist nor Kurdish), and changing Article 8 of theconstitution, which defines the role of the Ba’th party in the state; 81 endorsement of freeparliamentary elections in 2007; granting citizenship to the 100,000 disenfranchised Kurdsin the Hasakah region; 82 abrogation of the state of emergency that has existed since 1963and of law 49 of 1980, which stipulates capital punishment for membership in the MuslimBrotherhood; changing the triple slogan of the party (Unity, Freedom, Socialism) to “Unity,Democracy, Social Justice” in a bid to gradually turn it into a “social democrat” party,along the lines of processes that Communist parties in the former Soviet bloc went through;dismantling the national (pan-Arab) leadership, and finally, changing the name of the partyto “The Ba’th Arab Socialist Party in the Syrian Region” (i.e. to downplay the pan-Arabideology of the party) or to the “Democratic (Ba’th) Party” (to emphasize the “democratic”character of the party), and defining the party as a “democratic socialist national (Qawmipan-Arabnational) political organization which struggles for achieving the great goals ofthe Arab Nation for Unity, Freedom and Socialism,” based on “the principles of citizenshipand democracy and respect of human rights and implementation of justice among thecitizens.”These expectations were, to a large extent, based on the assumption that Bashar was a“closet reformer” who could not show his true colors because of the interference of the “oldguard.” Many Syrians expected the 10th Congress to imitate the 1996 conference of theSoviet Communist Party under Gorbachev. These expectations were not unfounded; theytook their cue from Bashar’s own public statements and those of his confidants. 83 Most ofthe Ba’th reformers, though—and certainly the civil-society movement—had no illusionsthat they could achieve even some of those goals. They realized that the goal of the partyleadership was “to repair—not to reform,” and that this should be done step by step and notby leaps and bounds. One informed source claims that the reformists intentionally spreadrumors about far-reaching reforms in order to create a level of expectation that would helpset the stage for further pressure on the regime after the Congress failed to deliver.The 10th Congress was not the doctrinal watershed that pre-Congress rumors hadprophesied. The Ba’th doctrine was not changed, but rather played down and relegated tominor reiterations of the original ideals of the party. Article 8 of the constitution and the“internal regime” remained in force and none of the reforms listed above were adopted.Arab unity is mentioned en passant and the demand for revolution and socialism in theentire Arab world is not mentioned at all. In fact, the 10th Congress was used by Bashar torevive the party as a mainstay of the regime and as an instrument for control of the publicspace, which the civil society movement had encroached upon. This was reflected in thecomposition of the delegates, the newly elected bodies, the agenda and the final resolutionsof the Congress.