Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 19, 2007 Thursday 2:06 AM EST
Following a prolonged period of intractability in international politics, Syrian President Bashar Assad has recently shown himself to be more accommodating. Assad is unwilling to change the close relations he enjoys with Iran, but he has been looking around for more allies in the Arab world.
Conversely at home, he has been pursuing a much harder line, despite the fact that he seemed to be more reform-minded than his father, Hafez Assad, whom he succeeded as president after his death seven years ago.
The upcoming parliamentary elections in Syria on Sunday will also be nothing more than a small democratic fig leaf, observers on the ground have said.
Although there are 945 candidates vying for the favour of the country's 11.9 million eligible voters, the outcome for the ruling Baath Party and its allies is certain as they have a guaranteed total of 167 out of the 250 seats in parliament reserved for them under Syrian law.
This spring, Syrians can see election posters everywhere they look, mostly with pictures of stern candidates.
But the Syrians are distinctly underwhelmed by this year's election campaign, which even the opposition has described as "glaringly lacking in content."
Hardly anyone in Syria believes that the Baath Party, which claims to carry the flag for "Arab socialism," cares about any ideological questions.
"It is about maintaining power and personal enrichment," one former party member said.
The exiled opposition National Salvation Front, which includes the banned Muslim Brotherhood and former vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam as members, has called for a boycott of the polls.
They claim the election is pure theatre that will be marked by undemocratic principles and electoral fraud as it has been in the past in their experience.
The opposition still in the country is also staying away from the polls.
"The one-party rule of the Baath Party and the efforts to shut out other forces has closed off the path to democracy," democratic opposition spokesman Hassan Abdul Asiem said.
Asiem belongs to the few critics of the regime who still dare to speak out publicly, because opposition politicians and human rights activists have felt the iron fist of the police state come down on them hard in the last 12 months like never before.
Contrast that with Assad's strikingly mild demeanour on the world stage.
"You are like my father," Assad told Saudi King Abdullah when he met him at an Arab summit in Riyadh at the end of March.
Observers at the summit said that the gesture was Assad's attempt to reconcile with the Arab leaders he had alienated so much the summer before.
Assad had said that the Arab critics of Hezbollah, the radical Syrian-supported Lebanese Islamist movement that went to war with Israel in the summer of 2006, were only "half men," while keeping its distance from the conflict.
The result of his comment was that only Iran remained loyal to Damascus as the Arab world turned their backs on him.
Assad has said that he would also like to revive the peace negotiations with Israel that officially hit a dead-end in 2000.
There was only a weak denial from Damascus following the unorthodox appearance of Syrian-American businessman Ibrahim Suleiman, who told Israeli lawmakers on April 12 that he had been taking part in secret negotiations between Syria and Israel.
Arab observers stress that Assad would like to resume talks about the return of the Golan Heights, which were annexed by Israel in 1967.
The renowned International Crisis Group (ICG) has also called on Israel to approach Syria without preconditions.
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