Comment: This is time of decision

The Regime can no longer blindly deny the will of the people

By Ali Bahr

In his latest speech, Syrian president Bashar Assad retreated from all the vows his political adviser Bouthaina Shaaban had made in previous days to the Syrian people. The president was frank. He did not make promises, nor did he bother with a timeline. He only delivered more threats to the people and more attacks on Arab satellite channels, just like the Syrian state and private TV stations have been doing for the past week.

Assad’s speech came as shock to everyone. He had nothing but archaic, dogmatic words for the public. We witnessed a failed theatrical performance, with him playing the part of leading man in front of 250 extras – the members of parliament who are supposed to represent the people.

He played on emotions. “Bashar sacrifices his life for the people,” he said, mocking us with his play on words. “We do not run away from the crisis, we walk with it,” he continued.

Like all his fellow dictators, the Syrian president speaks to his public as if addressing children. So Assad does not talk sense or logic. Instead he discusses reform priorities and gives the example of bread and freedom to convince us that food is more important than liberty and to tell us that he won’t lift the emergency law.

He neglects to recognise that the regime stole people’s food through instituting the emergency law. The absence of freedom legitimised and helped the robbery. If Assad had to chose between a daily luxury meal in prison – the Saidnaya military prison, for instance – and regular food in liberty, what would he chose? But his regime does not give us a choice. It steals the people’s food and keeps them in a big jail at the same time.

We only hope that Assad’s speech is not the opening shot in a series of large-scale massacres and arrests, because that seems to be the subtext of his message.

“Anyone who participated, intentionally or unintentionally, in the protests is also participating in killing our homeland,” he said.

The writer of the speech should feel ashamed, for it is unacceptable for the leading character to laugh and tell jokes while the martyrs’ blood in Deraa and Latkia has not yet dried.

As for Assad adviser Buthaina Shaaban, she used the words “Sunni” and “Alawite” for the first time in an official speech. So far, the regime has always made sure to present itself as a secular one. But experts believe that the Syrian regime might play the sectarian card. This is what the Egyptian regime tried to do to derail the revolution. In Syria too, they want to ruin the revolution with sectarianism. They want to cripple the revolution before it gets to the point of no return.

Yet, no matter what they do, the door of the revolution will not close again, even if the rebels and the opposition are accused of conspiracy. The regime will be putting itself in direct confrontation with 80 per cent of the Syrian population. The people oppose the regime, not because they like the opposition, not because they hate the government so much, but because they want change.

Syrians are of no less worth than the rest of the Arab people. They deserve security, dignity, justice and freedom. They want to catch up with their brothers and sisters in Tunisia and Egypt.

The Syrian regime has to initiate real political reforms because without that, it will be laying the foundations for a great social uprising, and more importantly will be setting the stage for a Syrian revolution bigger and deeper than anything the country has seen so far.

The regime keeps lying and correlating every popular uprising with foreign agendas. Do they really think people are still buying this?

The last of the regime’s lies is the propaganda on an allegedly Israeli website that the Saudi prince Bandar Ben Sultan supports a conspiracy against the Syrian regime. That regime forgets that a recent statement by an Israeli official insisted that Assad was the only partner for a peace dialogue as far as Israel is concerned. Where does this blind confidence come from?

Another lie claimed that terrorists are behind the events of Deraa and Latakia, although the intimate relationship between Syria’s intelligence and the radical groups Fatah Islam (Conquest of Islam) and Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant) has long been suspected.

As for the Syrian media, it follows in the regime’s footsteps as usual. They are spreading the same lies, and link all that is happening to a foreign conspiracy.

This means that there will be no reform. The minute Assad finished his speech, the media machine started defending the regime’s standards – yet the only standards this regime has are corruption, repression and treating people like animals and thieves.

If the emergency law is not lifted, there will be no real change and the corruption will continue. The Syrian revolution has to succeed because if it doesn’t, we will experience new massacres and arrests by the hundreds and thousands.

If the Syrian revolution does not succeed, following other  triumphant Arab revolutions, the Syrians will have no choice but to live in total despair and destruction.

Everyone should understand that the truth cannot be twisted, nor can history be broken, no matter how strong the protectors of the regime may be.