Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Assad forms committee to draft new Syria constitution

Published 20:07 15.10.11  Latest update 20:07 15.10.11
 
Assad forms committee to draft new Syria constitution
By Reuters
 
President Bashar Assad formed a committee on Saturday to draft a new 
constitution within four months, the official news agency said, 
following a series of new laws that gave Syrians more freedom on paper 
after months of popular unrest.
 
Under pressure from street protests demanding the end to 41 years of 
Assad family rule, the president has lifted a state of emergency and 
promised "multi-party" parliamentary elections by February. But he has 
also deployed tanks and troops across the country to crush persistent 
demonstrations, casting doubt on the credibility of his reform gestures, 
pro-democracy activists say.
 
"President Assad issued today decree number 33 which stipulates forming 
a committee to prepare for a draft constitution," the state news agency 
SANA said.
 
The constitution, which was changed by Assad's late father, President 
Hafez Assad, in the 1970s, discourages any political pluralism by 
stipulating that the ruling Baath Party is "leader of the state and 
society."
 
The Syrian opposition has called for the clause to be scrapped, along 
with another that says the president can only be nominated by his Baath 
Party as well as numerous laws passed in the last 50 years which they 
say allow Assad and his security apparatus to practice repression and 
corruption with impunity.
 
The Baath banned opposition when it took power in a 1963 coup. The party 
organisation has lost power and status in the last decade to Assad 
family members, some selected cohorts and the secret police, a bloc now 
underpinning the power structure.
 
New laws issued by Assad in the past three months permit "parties 
committed to democratic principles" and established an election 
commission. But they also preserved quotas that retain the majority of 
seats for farmers and workers, whose representatives are drawn from 
state-controlled unions.
 
Syria's current parliament, a rubber stamp body, does not have a single 
opposition figure.
 
Human rights activists say that the official legal changes have not 
stopped repression on the ground that has killed 3,000 civilians or 
tackled extraordinary decrees that make the secret police, which rights 
activists say is responsible for most of the killings during the unrest, 
unanswerable to any law.
 
They point to recent laws that toughened punishments for people 
demonstrating without a license and widened Assad's scope to invoke 
nationwide military mobilisation to include "internal disturbances" and 
to punish army deserters.
 
Syrian troops and police shot dead at least eight people protesting 
against Assad in the last 48 hours, activists said.
 
The United Nations called for international protection for civilians 
from a crackdown it said could lead to civil war between Syria's 
majority Sunni Muslims and members of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an 
offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
 
The shootings, near Aleppo and in Damascus and its suburbs, occurred as 
protesters took to the streets as they have done many times since 
Syria's uprising began in March, inspired by popular revolts that have 
ousted three Arab leaders this year.
 
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/assad-forms-committee-to-draft-new-syria-constitution-1.390091?localLinksEnabled=false
 
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 Assad forms committee to draft new Syria constitution
 
quando non si vuole ottenere nulla, si forma una commissione [G.
Clemenceau]