Syria: in a Father’s Footsteps

Syrians who hope for improvement in their country’s stagnant economy might take some small encouragement from their new president’s inaugural address this week. But Syrians who yearn for an easing of one-party authoritarian rule are out of luck.

Bashar Assad, son of the man who for three decades ruled Syria with a frequently bloody hand, took the oath of office fresh from a national referendum that awarded him a comfortable 97.29% of the votes cast. His first promise was to carry on his late father’s policies. His second was to begin revitalizing an economy whose performance, he conceded, had been “irregular” under Hafez Assad’s regime. The state-controlled economy has significantly trailed Syria’s explosive population growth, estimated at 3.3% a year. Unemployment is 20% or more, and some experts think the economy has in fact contracted over the last five years.

Assad says he intends to eliminate the corruption that has become endemic under the Baath Party, which has held power since 1963. He also says he will seek to introduce accountability and transparency into a government that sometimes seems paralyzed by bureaucratic inertia and will try to make all Syrians responsible for economic modernization efforts. He is no revolutionary, however. Change, if it comes, will come gradually and take place within existing political structures. That is meant to reassure the country’s elite--many of them members of Assad’s minority Alawi religious sect--and especially the powerful military and security services.

A more open society is not in prospect. As Assad put it, “We have to have our democratic experience which is special to us, which stems from our history, culture, civilization and which is a response to the needs of our society and the requirements of our reality.” Free expression will be allowed, though limited to “positive criticism” of government policies. In short, Syrians can expect continued authoritarianism, backed by the machinery of state repression.

Assad echoed his father’s familiar tough stand on peace with Israel, with no hint that negotiations, frozen since January, would resume soon. It’s clear that his emphasis for some time to come will be on domestic matters. He seems to understand that Syria has no choice but to make major systemic changes if it’s not to become a hopeless backwater in a global economy that is plunging ahead. He also knows that dire things could happen if the changes he seeks upset the military-political base on which his rule depends. The young man--Bashar Assad is 34--has his work cut out for him.