The New Party Law - Nothing New

Sami Moubayed explains in his recent article: "Friends of the Baath," the "freedom" that will be granted by the New Party Law, the draft of which has appeared and caused an uproar among the Syrian opposition. Here are his last few sentences:

The main qualifications of the founder [of any new party] should be: "that he has not acted in behaviour that is opposed to the Revolution of March 8". This means any person opposed to the Baath who has written, preached, or acted in the opposition since 1963 will be denied a political platform. The founding members should be 10. They should all abide by the general rule which is: "To preserve the objectives of the Revolution of March 8."

Another clause in this domain is Article 17, which says, "It is prohibited to re-launch any party that was disbanded before the year 1963."

Meaning, the National Party of Damascus, the People's Party of Aleppo, and clearly the Muslim Brotherhood, will not be allowed to re-operate.

The only three parties operating before 1963 which will be working in Syria are the Baath, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) that was banned in 1955 and re-permitted in 2005, and the Communist Party.

With these regulations, it is doubtful whether the multi-party law will be really effective in Syria. It means that the only parties allowed to operate will be the ones that are allied to the Baath, created by the Baath or friends of the Baath.

The draft law also prohibits any foreign activity on the part of Syrian parties:

All parties are clearly prohibited from operating outside Syria or even marketing their views with Syrians in the diaspora or among non-Syrians. This is currently being challenged by a multi-party law draft proposed by the National Progressive Front (NPF), a coalition of parties headed by the Baath, which says that marketing views outside of Syria is allowed, but fund-raising from abroad is not.

One Syrian friend living in Damascus, who has long worked in the opposition laments what this will mean for Syrians. He also criticizes the way many opposition members have jumped aboard the governments refusal to allow any foreign funding of civil society projects that can be cast by the government as "opposition," which is just about anything. We have already witnessed this with the closure of Anwar al-Bunni's new Center for Human Rights in Damascus, which was shut down by the government last week. My friend writes:

Dear Josh,
The "Syria Democracy Program", announced recently by US State Department, was not well received/understood by the Syrian opposition, I am afraid. As you know, the issue of a foreign financing is very sensitive for the traditional opposition, and they will try to deny receiving any foreign support, even if they accepted it.

Syrian laws forbid accepting such finances and serious penalties may be imposed in such cases. The "expected" party law will forbid receiving such finances also. As a result, I think that these finances will, eventually, find their way to opposition figures living abroad, which represents a wrong route, in my opinion.

Personally, I think that this program represents a good move from the American side, as a start. The question is: is the Syrian opposition ready to make use of it? I think that the Syrian opposition needs assistance in this regard too.

In my opinion, the program should start with financing a good deal of workshops, gathering as much as possible of Syrian opposition figures, living in Syria and abroad, to discuss questions, such as: should we accept foreign assistance? Do we need it? Can we accept it? Under which conditions? Etc.

One might expect here a clear polarization about these issues, but I expect that some kinds of support will be accepted by most parties, for example:

• Scholarships to Syrian students to study politics, economics, and related subjects;
• Scholarships to international experts to come to Syria, and conduct studies about Syrian politics;
• Workshops and study tours to Syrian opposition figures to learn about political life in the west;
• Translation of English websites, like yours, into Arabic, and translation of some Arabic websites into English…