Older blog<\/a> 29 June, 2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nA\n group of 200 persons met at Hotel Samiramis in Damascus for eight hours\n and issued a final statement in front of the cameras of the official \nSyrian TV and those of Dunia Channel (semi-official). The meeting was \npresented as a consultative one for “independent” personality from the \n“opposition”. Europeans and Americans were quick to support “the \nconference of the opposition”. Every thing about this meeting was vague \nand shrouded in mystery: the late announcement, participation by \ninvitation, meeting happened behind closed doors, no pre-announced list \nof participants, no pre-announced schedule, no guidelines for the \n“discussions”, no clear idea who organized it, many rumors about who is \nand who is not participating, and even the epithet to be given \n(conference, meeting, discussion) to the meeting was not clear.
\nIt transpired that Michel Kilo and Lu’ayy Husein \n“organized it” and Mundhir Khaddam “may have” presided over it. The LCC \n(Local Coordination Committees) condemned the meeting, and so did many \nopposition figures outside Syria.Personally,\n I think that such a meeting is highly inappropriate at this moment. \nFirst because it lacks transparency and consensus; second, it does not \ninclude representatives of the protesters and hence has no weight in the\n street where it matters; third, it gives an incorrect and undeserved \n“democratic” appearance to the regime; fourth, where would you get 200 \n“true” opposition figures in Syria who would dare speak out; finally, it\n de-legitimized the opposition living abroad, which made huge efforts to\n support the uprising internationally, by indirectly supporting the \nregime’s claim that the “true” opposition” must speak from the inside \nbecause everybody speaking from the outside is “a conspiratorial agent”.Many\n claimed that all sots of ways must be explored to resolve the stalemate\n in which the uprising has entered and fend off the serious specter or \ncivil war that is currently hanging over Syria. Moreover, they claim, \nthat they are exercising the freedom of speech which the protests have \nextracted from the regime. Sure, but there is still no real freedom of \nspeech in Syria because the regime is still shooting at the protesters. \nBy consequence, any act of protest that is not shot at becomes \nsuspicious of “cooperation” with the regime. I personally think that \nmany sincere voices participated in this meeting, but it is too soon to \ncall it a “victory” like some did. Given the lack of representation of \nthe “real” protesters, any meeting will be used by the regime to polish \nits international image and show the “reformist” face which it always \nclaimed to have. The situation now is like a poker game with the regime \nhaving a weak hand but showing a strong face. The heavy price that the \nSyrian people paid for its freedom can and should get far more \nconcessions from the regime if only the people win this waiting game.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Older blog 29 June, 2011 A group of 200 persons met at Hotel Samiramis in Damascus for eight hours and issued a final statement in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","wpcat-9-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scscme.org\/scscme\/blogs\/atassib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}