Bashar Still Wins Hearts with Intellectual Curiosity

I recently got an interesting note from Moatasem Salame describing a recent meeting with President Asad. He writes:

I am a Syrian who works to develop business through promoting e-learning in the Gulf. Please let me narrate this incident that can sum up a lot of the Syrian political scene:

Two years ago, I was participating in a Syrian IT expo held in Damascus. we were visited by most of the cabinet ministers and finally the president. You would expect the ministers and especially the so-called technocrats to be interested in what we were exhibiting (e-solutions such as e-health, e-document, content management, etc) and then your would expect the president to make a protocol visit with short or non conversations with the exhibitors but it was the absolute opposite: Ministers came for TV coverage, I can't remember anyone of them asking a genuine question or stoping for more than two minutes on the other hand, the president visited our stand for almost half an hour asking in depth questions, listening carefully and showing high interest in the subject matter.

I don't think that this incident needs a conclusion or a comment but I hope it could give you some idea on what is going on.
Best wishes,

Moatasem

An anonymous poster added the following analysis of why reform is slow.

Dear Joshua,
While I am hearing a lot of arguments to the extent that Bashar is putting capable people in top positions, we see four major defects:

1- Many newly appointed officials on top such as the ones connected with the various sectors of the economy are imported expatriates disconnected from the Syrian complicated laws and the legal loopholes. They lack the means to establish effective channels between the economic elements in the society necessary to communicate the detailed problems hindering reforms. While Bashar and his wife are reaching to the masses to get a feel of the social problems (maybe primarily for enhancing their self image), his economic ministers are only relying on Bath controlled establishments (like the chambers of industry, commerce and agriculture) which have no interest in anything but advancing their member's personal wealth.

2- While these newly appointed ministers have acceptable resumes, Bashar is not giving them the free hand to make the necessary cleanup of their ministries. Appointments of employees on departmental level and below still require the approval of Bath leadership and appointments are still made on the basis of favoritism and not merits. In turn, such appointees are making sure these departments they head serve their personal interest at the expense of the general welfare.

3- No reforms are made on the level of local governments whatsoever. A local official is still appointed for being only a Bath favorite and lacking the minimum merits to do the job and the chance of scheduling an appointment with such an official is much slimmer than meeting Bashar dining at a local restaurant. Once again, the means to communicate problems prior to solving them is absent.

4- The Judicial system is Syria is in a state of misery. Chances of finding an honest non-corrupt judge are slimmer than winning the lottery. Justice is auctioned on daily basis to the highest bidder. Final verdicts take years to obtain. Enforcements of verdicts cost a good percentage of the verdict. Suing the government is next to impossible even though the government is the main confiscator of people's economic rights (since we are keeping the discussion on the economic problems of Syria)

In light of the above, I don’t see how Bashar is doing anything at this time to correct the problems with the Syrian economy except by encouraging the unequal distribution of wealth and making the poor much poorer while his relatives are harvesting the majority of economic benefits under his so-called reforms.
Thank you for replying back to my previous post.