A 'One Man Party', One Party State?

A very interesting post on Syria Comment with several comments and quotes showing that the shootings, at least on the Syrian coast, might have actually been carried out by groups linked to Khaddam. I can't discount that, and it might be quite possible. But there are so many lies, and such a crisis of credibility for the Syrian goverment, that it's simply not possible for me to make any judgements about what is happening. Time will tell, but I think that this has been a massive learning curve for the Syrian government if the president is serious about reform. One thing that can be certain is that not all the people who were shot could be said to have been killed by these mysterious 'armed groups'. The police, and the security services, were shooting people with live ammunition. Whoever is responsible for that must be made accountable.

For one thing, the bad old days of shooting anybody who opposes you, or locking them in a hole somewhere, might well and truly be over in an age of fast, almost instant, communications. Furthermore, the clumsy response of the state, with propagandic slogans and clampdown on information, destroyed their credibility even when they might have been telling the truth.

Secondly there is a desperate need for more open government and accountability. The right hand of the state apparatus does not appear to know what the left hand is doing. The head of the state is said to have been oblivious to the 'legitimate' grievances of the people, which is, to be utterly frank, a deplorable and unacceptable failure of organisation. Hundreds of people are dead because of this failure - and let us call it by what it really is - in government. It simply will not do that the only recourse for justice in the entire country is one man, even if he did have the best intentions. Syria is not a tribe, it is a modern nation.

Thirdly, the country needs a functioning government that represents a wide cross-section of society with independent and solid institutions that are run by qualified people who deserve to be there - not rewarded a position simply for their party card or connections.

Fourthly, the reforms that Syria needs to implement, including removing the state of emergency, shouldn't take as long as people are saying that they should. When the last president died, the consitution was amended almost immediately so that his son could take power. Syria is in a greater state of crisis today than back then, so why aren't these changes made immediately? As Abd al Bari Atwan stated in a BBC debate recently, why should it be shameful for a government to relent to pressure from its own people? There is indeed no shame in doing that. Especially for a country that has always resisted pressure from the United States and other countries.