Kassioun Editorial 1279: “I Am the People; I Am Moving Forward and I Know My Way!”

This new wave of popular movement has a number of qualitative characteristics, the most important of which are:

First: It is an authentic movement arising from the direct living needs of Syrians. It is far removed from external interventions, precisely because it stems directly from people’s needs, on the one hand; and on the other, it has learned from previous experiences not to trust external interveners, and not to allow them to exploit it for their own objectives, which often contradict its objectives. Today it is learning on the ground to produce its own leadership from within itself.

Second: It is a movement with a clear class-based character. It is the movement of the 90%—the poor, the marginalized, and the plundered. It is therefore a comprehensive national movement, transcending ethnic, religious, sectarian, and even distorted political divisions. It is the movement of the oppressed people, who are demanding their rights and daily livelihood, and in essence demanding radical solutions to accumulated crises—not within a year or two, but through decades of oppression, injustice, and the absence of social justice. It is therefore a peaceful movement to the core, and national to the core. It dreams of a just, strong, and unified Syria, and it alone can turn this dream into reality through organizing itself more and more.

Third: It is a movement that seeks to complete the overthrow of Assad’s authority by changing the regime that remains intact in essence. A political system in any country is not merely a set of individuals or slogans; rather, its essence lies in how wealth is produced and distributed. As long as we live under economic neoliberalism that seeks to eliminate the social role of the state through lifting subsidies in the various forms—including support for national production, especially in agriculture and industry—and through implementing the recommendations of the IMF and World Bank, as well as through an economy based on “luxury, hotels, investor reviews, and formal suits”, then in the socioeconomic sense, we are still in the same system announced by Bashar al-Assad in 2005 under the label of the “social market economy”, whose first practical “achievements” were raising fuel prices, which struck agriculture and industry in a country heading to the abyss, and contributed to the conditions that led to 2011 and what followed.

This new wave of Syrian movement in pursuit of their demands is a patriotic, healthy, and positive phenomenon. All national forces—whatever their positions—must engage with it, meet it, embrace it, assist it, protect it, encourage it, and learn from it.

On the broader political level, the real and swift response to the people’s movement lies in truly including them in determining their own fate, as the free people who are the owners of the country. The way forward is through a genuine national unity government established urgently, and a comprehensive general national conference with full powers to address all unresolved issues, old and new alike, where Syrians can agree on how to resolve them, primarily the needed socioeconomic model, which must serve the more than 90%, who are the plundered and impoverished. That is to serve the Syrian people.

(النسخة العربية)