Bashar Assad was elected secretary-general by Syria’s ruling Baath Party yesterday and is expected to be formally nominated president within days, succeeding his father, Hafez Assad.
Yesterday’s election took place on the second day of a crucial party congress, its first in 15 years.
Earlier yesterday, the state newspaper Tishreen warned that the Baath Party would stick to the late president’s firm line on Israel – and that conference delegates would mobilize “all resources to regain the Golan.”
Hafez Assad, who died June 10 of heart failure after 30 years in power, had cut off peace negotiations because Israel couldn’t assure him it would completely withdraw from the Golan Heights.
Israel has promised to give back the Golan, but wants to keep partial water rights in the Lake of Galilee and insists that a neutral army be stationed at the border – both things Assad had refused to even talk about.
After Hafez Assad’s death, Israelis and Americans were keeping their fingers crossed that Bashar, a 34-year-old British-educated eye doctor groomed to inherit the presidency, would have a softer stance on Israel.
But until he has his own power base, he can do little to change his father’s peace policies.
Syrians are hoping he can move more quickly on domestic issues, however, since there is an urgent need to reform and modernize the country.
Syria today is beset by economic woes and institutional corruption – a communications and information technology wasteland stuck in the 1970s and a bastion of authoritarian rule.
Syrian officials, who tightly control the media, appear resigned to the change.
“The leadership of Dr. Bashar Assad, that young man filled with hope, expectations and dreams, must be a continuation of the struggle of the leader [Hafez] Assad … so he can use his faculties and abilities to fulfill the nation’s dreams of a quality future,” the Al-Thawra daily said in a front-page editorial yesterday.