Governance and politics of Syria

Introduction

Syria is officially a democracy, whose President is elected and which is governed by the rule of law and a Constitution that specifies the rights and duties of citizens and officials, including human rights. Syria is, in reality, however, a police state, in which the President and his family wield power through ruthless security and intelligence agencies whose key function is to root out and suppress dissent. Detention without charge or trial, torture, and disappearances are routine and practised with impunity. The cabinet, Parliament, judiciary, and media are all essentially creatures of the regime.

Syria was a parliamentary democracy, albeit a limited one, until 1958, when it merged with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt to form the United Arab Republic (UAR). In the UAR the ruling Arab Socialist Union was the only lawful party, and state security agencies wielded increasing power. Syria’s evolution into a full-fledged police state accelerated after the March 1963 coup that brought the leftist and nationalist Baath Party to power, and especially after the coup – officially termed the Corrective Movement – in November 1970 by Hafiz al-Assad, then Defence Minister and a leading figure in the pragmatic wing of the party. Al-Assad brought all organs of the state under his and his family’s personal control and greatly expanded the military and the feared security agencies. Even the Baath Party became little more than an agent of the President, shedding all but a rhetorical adherence to its former ideology.

Hafiz al-Assad died in June 2000, having ensured that his son, Bashar, would succeed him. Although the political atmosphere lightened in the period after Bashar’s assumption of the presidency, the apparatus of repression remains firmly in place.

While the regime claims to be broadly based, its core comes from Syria’s minority Alawite community. Comprising about 12 percent of the country’s population, estimated at 22.5 million in mid-2012, the Alawis are a heterodox Shiite sect, whose members live mainly in the north-western coastal mountains. The regime is, nevertheless, avowedly secular, and, as such, has enjoyed support from minority communities, including Christians and various other Shiite sects (including Druze and Ismailis), who fear rising Islamist sentiment amongst the country’s Arab Sunnis, who comprise perhaps 65 percent of the population.

Despite the realities, the regime assiduously nurtures essentially mendacious narratives to justify its continued relevance: that it represents the people and governs by popular assent, that it is the guardian of national unity and Arab nationalist aspirations, and that it is a bastion against Western ‘imperialism’ and Israeli expansionism.

Central to these attempts to confer legitimacy upon itself have been national constitutions promulgated in 1973 and 2012, which, especially in the case of the 2012 document, were crafted to appear to define and limit regime powers while actually doing precisely the opposite. Syria achieved independence from France in 1946, with a Constitution based on the 1930 Constitution, imposed during the French mandate. New or amended Constitutions or re-adoptions of previous Constitutions were promulgated in 1950, 1953, 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1969, 1971, 1973, 2000, and 2012, these changes closely reflecting changes of regime in Damascus.

The 2012 Constitution is an amended version of the 1973 document, which was put in place by President Hafiz al-Assad. The 1973 document enshrined the ruling Baath Party, led by the President, as ‘the leading party in society and the state’, a clause that first appeared in the 1969 temporary Constitution; it concentrated power in the hands of the President. Echoing Baathist rhetoric, the 1973 document defined Syria as a part of the Arab nation, whose goals were ‘unity, freedom, and socialism’. It asserted that ‘the revolution in the Syrian Arab region is part of the comprehensive Arab revolution’ and that ‘the march toward the establishment of a socialist order, besides being a necessity stemming from the Arab society’s needs, is also a fundamental necessity for mobilizing the potentialities of the Arab masses in their battle with Zionism and imperialism’.

Constitutional Referendum 2012

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The present Constitution was one of a series of responses by the authorities to a pro-democracy uprising that began in March 2011 and evolved, in large part, into an armed insurgency.

The new Constitution ostensibly seeks to introduce democracy and pluralism and to end the monopolistic grip on power of the Baath Party and the al-Assad family. It largely drops the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1973 Constitution, instead defining Syria as ‘a democratic state’ whose ‘people (…) are part of the Arab Nation’ and as a country with ‘multiple religious sects’. The Constitution asserts that ‘the political system is based on the principle of political pluralism, and rule is only acquired and exercised democratically, through voting’, and it limits presidents to two seven-year terms. The Constitution was the subject of a referendum on 26 February 2012. Two days later it was announced that 89.4 percent of the vote had been in favour, and President al-Assad promulgated the document the same day.

Opposition to the Constitution

Syria’s opposition movement, which urged Syrians to boycott the constitutional referendum, is deeply sceptical, condemning the new Constitution as a sham, designed to enable the embattled regime to retain power under the guise of democracy. Critics note that the document includes a ban on retroactive legislation, implying that the 14-year limit on presidential terms might enable President Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000 and whose present term expires in 2014, to remain in office until 2028. They point to Article 8(4), which stipulates that ‘No political activity shall be practiced and no political party or group formed on religious, sectarian, tribal, regional, or professional basis or according to discrimination on the basis of sex, origin, race, or colour’. This, they observe, effectively perpetuates the existing bans on the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which is almost certainly the largest political current in the country, and on various Kurdish parties. Sceptics also point to Article 60, which stipulates that ‘at least half of the members of the assembly (Parliament) should be workers and farmers, as defined by law’. They observe that Syria’s workers’ and peasants’ associations are rigidly controlled by the state, ensuring that Parliament will be dominated by regime loyalists.

In addition, the President would, under the new Constitution, retain broad powers. He ‘lays down the general policy of the state and oversees its implementation’, can draft laws, and assumes legislative authority when Parliament is not sitting. The President can also declare war or a state of emergency: Article 114 of the new Constitution affirms that ‘in case of grave danger that threatens national unity or the safety and independence of the homeland or hinders the state’s institutions from undertaking their Constitutional duties, the President may take prompt action required by the circumstances to face the danger’. Sceptics assert that this potentially gives the President carte blanche to act as he pleases, when he feels that his regime is threatened.

The Constitution includes a series of ringing commitments to personal freedoms, for example, that ‘freedom is a sacred right, and the state shall guarantee the personal freedom of its people and safeguards their security and dignity’; that ‘homes are protected and shall not be entered or inspected except by order of judicial authority and in the cases specified by law’; that ‘citizens have the right to assemble and demonstrate peacefully’; and that ‘it is prohibited to torture or treat anyone in a humiliating manner’.

Critics observe that the 1973 Constitution, which did nothing to protect

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Syrians from the ravages of Hafiz al-Assad’s secret police, contained similar high-sounding provisions and that the same regime that introduced the 2012 Constitution had, since March 2011, been murdering, imprisoning, and torturing civilian pro-democracy activists and their families and destroying and looting their homes, with impunity, and that it continued to do so after the Constitution’s adoption. The United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, stated in April 2016 that 400,000 Syrians had been killed in the war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in December 2016 that more than two million Syrians had been wounded; and according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 4.9 million Syrians have fled the country.

If the uprising in which Syria is presently mired ends with President al-Assad’s downfall, it is doubtful whether the 2012 Constitution will outlive the regime that sponsored it.

Since the Baathist coup of March 1963, Syria’s presidents have been dictators, with few checks on their powers. This has been especially so in the cases of Hafiz al-Assad, who seized power in November 1970, and his son Bashar, who has ruled since his father’s death in June 2000. The unchecked power of the presidency and the habitual abuse of those powers to enhance the power and interests – including the economic and financial interests – of the President’s family have been major factors in the uprising and insurgency in which Syria has been engulfed since March 2011.

The President’s powers are ostensibly defined and limited by the 2012 Constitution, which affirms that presidents must be elected and may serve no more than two seven-year terms and that candidates for the presidency must obtain the written support of at least 35 members of the People’s Assembly (Parliament) and be approved by the Supreme Constitutional Court.

The President appoints and can dismiss Vice Presidents, the Prime Minister, and other ministers. He can issue ‘decrees and orders’, provided that they accord with ‘the law’. He oversees state policy and, with the approval of Parliament, he can declare war and states of emergency. He is ‘the chief commander of the military and the armed forces and takes all decisions related to this authority, though he may delegate some of them’. The President can dissolve Parliament and issue laws while Parliament is dissolved, although, by two-thirds majority, Parliament may subsequently amend or annul such legislation.

The President can present draft laws for approval by the People’s Assembly, and he promulgates the laws approved by the People’s Assembly. He may veto these laws but must accept them if the Assembly again approves them by a two-thirds majority.

President Bashar al-Assad was reelected on 3 June 2014 for a third seven-year term, despite widespread local and international criticism. President Bashar al-Assad was re-elected on 3 June2016 for a third term of seven years, despite widespread local and international criticism. The elections had been run amid a bloody conflict that by 2017 had killed an estimated 400,000 people, internally displaced 6.3 million and forced 4.9 million to flee.

The opposition, its Western allies, and Gulf Arabs denounced the process as a farce, arguing that no credible vote can be held in a country where great swaths of the territory are outside state control and millions have been displaced by conflict.

Voting was held only in government-controlled areas, excluding large parts of northern and eastern Syria that are in rebel hands, while the war continued on election day, with the air force bombing parts of Aleppo and fierce fighting in Hama, Damascus, Idlib, and Daraa.