Comrades,
Every day, the people’s suffering deepens, and their sense of oppression and injustice intensifies. At the same time, the ruling family’s regime becomes more oppressive and corrupt.
Since the founding of the party, Baathists aspired to build a society free from fear, poverty, oppression, and exploitation—a society of progress and development. However, under the guise of unity and socialism, the regime has built a society characterized by poverty, fear, and backwardness.
The regime enacted laws under the banner of applying the social market economy, allowing a corrupt segment to control the national economy and economic institutions. They utilized state apparatuses and institutions while the people’s poverty increased, living standards declined, and prices rose. Thus, the regime achieved a social economy of injustice.
The party’s aspirations included achieving Arab unity, but our collective fear is now focused on national unity, dismantled by the regime’s actions. The party sought freedom, considering it a sacred cause, yet today, under this regime, advocating for freedom becomes a reason for assassination, arrest, or displacement.
The party aimed to build a democratic state, asserting in its fundamental principles that the state’s legitimacy comes from the free choice of the people, free from any interference or pressure. Today, advocating for democracy has become a major crime.
The party’s ambitions also included the struggle to liberate Arab countries from colonial rule. Additionally, the party sought the liberation of Palestine. However, the enemy is now close to Syrian land, committing aggressions, and the regime’s response is that retaliation will occur at the right time. You all know, comrades, that Israel plays a significant role in protecting the regime and ensuring its continuity through pressures exerted on several countries.
Comrades,
The most dangerous consequence of this regime is the sectarian tension, posing the greatest threat to Syria’s future, security, and stability. The regime utilizes this tension to frighten different segments of society, making it easier to control the country’s destiny.
The growth of sectarianism affects not just a specific group but all sects. This should raise our concern and prompt us to struggle for achieving national and peaceful change, restoring national unity, which serves as a protective barrier for our people and strength for progress and stability.
Comrades,
All this takes place under the slogans of unity, freedom, and socialism, and under the motto “The Arab Socialist Baath Party is the leader of society and the state.”
Are you leading the country?
Are those leaders sitting in their offices waiting for directives from one of the three who lead the regime: the head of state, his brother Colonel Maher, and his cousin Rami Makhlouf?
Comrades,
The conflict is not between the people and the Baath Party; rather, the party is a prisoner of the regime, using a few thousand opportunistic party members who fell into the pit of corruption. They chose to become tools and aids to the regime, helping in repression and facilitating corruption.
You bear a great responsibility to liberate the party from the regime’s prison, thus liberating yourselves from responsibilities before your people. Your silence on the tyranny done in your name and the corruption carried out under the party’s slogans holds you accountable. The struggle is not between the party and the people but between freedom and tyranny, between the people’s right to determine their fate and the nullification of their role and control over their destiny.
We know that the majority of you are discontented with the regime and its practices, distanced from party meetings. But this is not enough to liberate the party from the regime’s grip.
Comrades, we call on you to realize the gravity of the situation, not only for the party but for the country’s future. In case this regime persists, it is an extremist system that has deviated from all norms, discarded all values, impoverished the people, stifled freedoms, and instilled fear. It practices the pinnacle of terrorism and extremism, creating an environment for the growth of extremism and terrorism. The country is lost between the conflicts of extremists and their terrorism.
Your choice must be with the people to achieve change, building a democratic civil state embracing modernity, ensuring citizens’ basic equal rights regardless of religion, sect, or gender.
Comrades,
Organize yourselves, start working to express your positions through publications in this stage. Struggle with all the forces of the people and be the pioneers in working for change and raising the flag of freedom in Syria’s sky.
The Temporary Leadership of the Arab Socialist Baath Party in Syria