Bashar al-Assad’s public statements on regime stability and reforms

6 for the fall of the regime. The president is now fighting for his political life and for that of the regime put in place in 1970 by his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad. Forty-one years in power The rule of the Assads, father and son, has now lasted 41 years, a score comparable to that of other long-lasting Arab autocrats, each apparently determined to be a président-a-vie. In no other part of the world have so many rulers clung so assiduously to power. Bashar appears genuinely to have believed that the Arab nationalist ideology he inherited, his opposition to Israel and his support for resistance movements such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, gave him immunity from popular discontent. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on 31 January, he claimed that Syria could not be compared to Egypt. “Why is Syria stable,” he asked, “although we have more difficult conditions? Egypt has been supported financially by the United States, while we are under embargo by most countries of the world. We have growth although we do not have many of the basic needs for the people. Despite all that, the people do not go into an uprising. So it is not only about needs and not only about reform. It is about the ideology, the beliefs and the cause that you have. There is a difference between having a cause and having a vacuum.” Unfortunately for Bashar, this analysis has proved wrong. As if caught unawares, his first public speech on 30 March was a public relations disaster. It was delivered to an obedient parliament, which interrupted him repeatedly with acclamation and crass plaudits. In an aside, he seemed to concede that external crises had distracted him from making the reforms he had intended when he first took office. In a second speech on 16 April to his newly appointed cabinet, he announced the lifting of the hated state of emergency, in force since the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1963, and the abolishing of the dreaded Special State Security Court. But even these moves came to HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024963