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Kassioun Editorial 1084: Why the Huge Acceleration in Exterminating Subsidies?
The process of reducing subsidies began to accelerate towards lifting it with the tenth five-year plan, that is, since 2005 with the official adoption of the so-called “social market economy”. It was clear since its inception that it was mapped out based on the recommendations of the IMF and the World Bank, which have one recipe for all “periphery states”. The recipe, which is based on low wages and weak production, reinforces Western hegemony and promotes the migration of brains and human resources.
The implementation of the same map continued steadily despite all the changes, despite the crisis, and despite Western sanctions. The crisis itself became a pretext for accelerating the implementation, even though the crisis in particular was a historical opportunity to get out of economic dependence on the West, by truly opening the doors with the emerging countries. However, that did not happen because the interests of the corrupt, the plunderers, and the dominating are organically linked to the West, and it turned out that those are the strongest and most controlling.
If all this is understandable, then what requires an explanation is the horrendous acceleration in the processes of lifting and ending subsidies that took place over the last weeks and months, to the extent that the news of lifting or reducing subsidies for this or that service and sector has become nearly daily news.
If lifting or reducing subsidies in major issues such as fuels is usually justified by the budget deficit and the supposed “reserves” that can be achieved, then the almost daily procedures in the processes of lifting subsidies during the last two months in particular, cannot be explained at all from this point of view, because the supposed “reserves” is meager and meaningless from a financial and economic point of view. Therefore, it is not so from a political point of view either.
The only possible explanation for these processes, which are unjustifiable even from a “liberal” point of view, is that the campaign of exterminating subsidies is a preparation for the next stage, and the timetable is tight and short, and it requires great viciousness in ending the subsidies that will completely kill it, within a short period to come.
To put it more clearly, those leading the campaign are preparing the conditions based on their conviction that a great change is coming, which is, in essence, the implementation of a political solution. Therefore, they are seeking to cause the greatest amount of destruction in the structure of the Syrian economy to create the conditions for them to come back through the economic backdoor at a later stage.
Perhaps beyond that, those who are organically linked to the West are carrying out their last mission before the political solution, which is to “forfeit” Western economic hegemony over Syria, conditioned on it be completely destructive and turn into a burden for the West’s opponents, and of course into a burden on the Syrian people themselves.
However, as the saying goes, “every cloud has a silver lining”. In essence, the subsidy policy complements the policy of weak, plundered, and unreal wages, and it is also a tool of control, domination, and corruption. Ending this policy puts again the contradiction between wage earners and profit earners on track for a real solution towards building an economy with real productivity and real wages, where the lowest level starts from the real minimum standard of living, and increases within the wage scale, which is what was approved for the first time by the current constitution, but it did not get translated from paper to reality.
Killing subsidies in this accelerated manner is a recognition of the end of any social role by the state for the interest of the people, and it means the end of any objective justification for the continuation of the status quo. It also means that the rebirth of Syria through UNSC Resolution 2254 has become more imminent and urgent.
