DAMASCUS, 7 July 2003 — Syria’s ruling Baath party, the instrument of more than three decades of rule, has promised to ease its grip on political life, according to a document published yesterday.
Syrian President Bashar Assad promised political liberalization in 2000 after succeeding his late father Hafez Assad, but has been slow in implementing it.
“The role of the leader-party is to plan, supervise, direct, observe and take account,” said the ruling party resolution printed in the Iqtisadiyya journal, citing “the need for comrades and party institutions to be entirely distant from daily executive work”.
The decision was praised in the state press in advance of its publication.
But analysts and intellectuals have questioned its potential impact in Syria, where effective authority lies with the president, senior military and intelligence officials — virtually all of them members of the nominally socialist party.
The resolution comes after a call by hundreds of intellectuals to Assad to expand political liberties and end martial law to allow Syria to stand up to pressure from Washington over its support for militant groups and alleged development of chemical weapons.
“The only force that is capable of this is a free people,” said an open letter signed by nearly 300 Syrian intellectuals addressed to Assad last month, which was published abroad but not in the country.
Yesterday’s declaration also pledged to make competence, rather than political affiliation, the criteria for state employment.
