Opening the Floodgates…

As part of a series of far-reaching reforms in Syria, the Ba’ath party in Syria is set to open Syria for multi-party elections. Sami Moubayed, author of the above linked to article, notes that this is further proof Syria is in no need of outside intervention. However, what Moubayed fails to realize is this is exactly what they are setting themselves up for.

I invite Cominganarchy readers to take a trip with me in the Wayback machine to the Philippines under the Marcos regime in the 80s. On November 3rd 1985, Ferdinand Marcos, then dictator of the Philippines, announced a general election to be held and dismissed claims of past election fraud as “silly” and that he was ready for a fair one. Through considerable US pressure and assistance of the opposition as well as a US delegation of election monitors, Marcos was eventually forced to step down as his attempts at election fraud were exposed. On Feb. 7th 1986, the Philippines finally moved back into the democratic world with the election of Corazon Aquino.

Let us now travel back in time to the the land of Chile under Pinochet. in 1986, The Pinochet regime authorized the interior minister to met with the opposition and discuss rules for a plebiscite. The opposition originally boycotted the meeting thinking it was a trap to legitimize Pinochet though in reality the members of the military junta were behind it and were not at all pleased. After agreeing to the plebiscite, Pinochet was therefore forced to allow organization and campaigning by the opposition, which in turn was supported by the United States through the US embassy in Santiago run by Ambassador Barnes. On October 5th 1988, Chileans turned out en masse to vote in a government approved plebiscite. By the end of the day, there was a 54 – 44 percent victory for the “No” vote. As the military had promised to guarantee the voting results, they accepted Pinochets loss and one year later, Patricio Aylwin was elected president in the first free elections in Chile in nearly two decades.

Returning to the present, Syria seems to be making the same mistake. Granted the opposition isn’t as strong in Syria and most of its democrats are in exile, the window of opportunity has been opened. The two stages to this are (1) Organizing and Communicating and (2) Facing and Ousting according to Ambassador Mark Palmer. Any direct action by the US is likely to do more harm than good given the current political situation, however we have plenty of other channels. If we go out on a limb and assume Assad does have the majority’s support, enforcing the election laws (including allowing opposition parties to organize, campaign and such) and the results will already make a giant crack in Assad’s rule.

Assad is clearly sure of himself and counting on giving a few positions away for show and pleasing the opposition and more importantly the US/EU/UN. His bluff must be called. This could be the best opportunity for unseating the only remaining Ba’ath regime peacefully and through domestic channels.

PS: Of additional interest is that Egypt’s Hosnia Mubarak is doing the same.