Just like all the other steps of the Syrian regime, the formation of the national dialogue committee was dubious and confused. What is worse is that the decision revealed the hegemony of a closed and circular language that ends where it started, based on symbols and signals that are for the most part devoid of any meaning. What the Syrian official SANA news agency said regarding the decision to establish “a committee whose mission will be to set the foundation for national dialogue and define its mechanism and schedule,” seemed to be a repetition – word for word – of the formulas related to the establishment of committees to investigate the recent events and look into the lifting of the state of emergency among others. This is due to the fact that the Syrian authority is abstaining from adopting a clear position toward the developments, fearful that it might look weak or submissive in the face of the pressures, even if these pressures are exerted by the people who are the source of all powers in modern states. The use of vague sentences and odd formulations is one way for the regime to elude the recognition of its inability to handle the problems that are growing increasingly difficult and complicated. According to the talk attributed to President Bashar al-Assad, the new committee's task will feature “the drafting of the general bases for the dialogue that will be launched, in order to ensure an adequate climate allowing all the national movements to express their ideas and voice their opinions and suggestions in regard to political, economic and social life in Syria. This ought to secure wide transformations to expand participation, especially at the level of the partisan and electoral laws, the media law, and the ending of social and economic marginalization from which certain social factions are suffering.” At this point, there is no reference to an authority or the specter of an authority capable of adopting a decision over the outcome of dialogue. Moreover, the participants in this dialogue must “voice” their opinions, without defining the way these participants are selected to sit around the dialogue table with a regime that has not stopped oppressing its citizens, but finds no problem in summoning some of them to discuss the attacks against the towns and villages and the round-the-clock arrest and torturing of children before adults. In the meantime, this regime is insisting on absolute discretionary authority in accepting or rejecting the suggestions and opinions of the interlocutors, but also in refusing the amendment of article 8 of the constitution which stipulates that the Baath Party is the leader of the state and society. It can thus be easily said that the logical premises for the formation of the committee (as long as there is an insistence on formal logic) will lead to failure, considering that these same premises surrounded the presidential pardon which featured numerous exceptions and generated countless questions. And just like the pardon, the committee will not solve Syria's crisis and will not bring the country closer to an exit, as they were both produced by a closed vision of the situation in Syria and the method of governance in the country. It is no secret at this level that this vision and method are no longer useful in light of the deep crisis witnessed in the country. The persistence on denial at the political level is proceeding alongside heated attempts to impose a media blackout over the facts of the Syrian reality. The regime does not care that its prevention of the entry of Arab and foreign independent journalists is serving the opposition's portrayal of the events, as the regime knows that the evidence in favor of the protesters is much stronger than the one in favor of its own interests. It probably believes that openness to the media will mark the beginning of a fall from which it would not be able to recover, due to the anger with which the world will receive the horrific revelations featured in the articles and pictures of the correspondents in Syria. And today, while thousands of Syrians are demonstrating and demanding their right to freedom and dignity, spokespersons for the regime will not hesitate to deprive the protesters, detainees, and deceased, of their humanity and debase them to sublevels of “scum,” as it was decreed by that outspoken university professor. However, this will only hasten change and the end of the stage of the strangest reforms in the world.
