Dominic Waghorn
Sky News
‘Announce something, announce something’, pleaded one tweet half way through Bashar al Assad’s rambling anti climax of a speech to parliament.
This was another succinct précis: ‘Short version Bashar speech: reforms maybe. Foreign conspiracies definitely. Satellite channels are bad.’
Bashar al Assad has done a Mubarak. Instead of offering concessions to pro-democracy protestors, as was widely expected, he bottled it.
And just like the now fallen Egyptian regime he blamed recent unrest on foreign conspirators, even if he did concede that not all the protestors could be plotters.
If you want an insight into the paranoid thinking of those close to the Assad regime, this is worth looking at on a Syrian news website sympathetic to the government. It is a detailed, totally unsubstantiated concoction of conspiracy theories from the mind of someone who appears to have spent far too much time on the internet. There will be plenty of people in Syria prepared to believe it though. Assad may be one of them, judging from his speech.
On the same website close presidential adviser Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban takes a swipe at the Arab satellite channels condemned by her president.
They‘adopt the typical position of absolutely denying what is happening in their countries while carrying on with the coverage of political activity calling for change in neighbouring Arab countries.’
This is the same official who last week dismissed the pro democracy protests in her own country as just so much foreign instigated subversion and insisted the death toll was as low as ten people, when most estimates put it as higher than sixty.
The advice of Dr. Bouthaina and those like her, based on the above logic, has meant that Bashar al Assad has not lifted emergency laws that go back to before he was born.
He has watched turmoil sweeping the Arab world and he has watched its leaders dither, promise concessions, pull back from actually delivering them and being consumed in the anger and disappointment that follows.
Like them he looks like he is caught in the headlights of the protest juggernaut careering through his region. He is gambling that Syria will be different, and that he has enough support to face down the protests against his rule.
2 comments:
As had long been predicted, Syrian President Bashar Assad indeed delivered his Wednesday address on the growing unrest in his nation. But while the speech was expected to be a plea for order and a promise of myriad reforms, it was instead a defiant moment.
Syria Must have discuss with their protesters with peaceful. If they fight with their protesters they cant achieve what they want so they should have a talk with their protesters.
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