Presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban gave a press conference at 6 pm on Thursday evening, in response to violent demonstrations in the southern town of Daraa near the border with Jordan. President Bashar al-Assad, she stressed, had given strict orders not to fire at demonstrators with live ammunition - and expressed his sorrow for the senseless loss of life in Daraa.
Shaaban, dressed in black, firmly noted that the people of Daraa "are our sons and our peoples". She promised an immediate investigation into the bloody events there, just hours after Assad had dismissed the governor of the southern city, Faisal Kalthoum, from his duties to appease the town's residents.
In Latakia, armed bandits broke into the city, snipping at locals from rooftops, while in Homs, the mob ransacked the Officers' Club, killing one civilian on duty. The mob smashed car windows, set buses and tires ablaze, and fired at locals indiscriminately. News about Syria was suddenly given top priority on TV networks around the world, trumping Yemen, Libya and Japan.
Martial law - which authorizes arbitrary arrest without needing a warrant - will likely be suspended this week and the cabinet of Ba'athist Prime Minister Mohammad Naji al-Otari (in power since 2003) will probably be sacked. Assad is expected to give a speech this week, outlining the reforms Syrians should expect and setting timetables for their implementation.
If a law allowing for political pluralism is indeed issued, it would immediately challenge, and effectively drop, Article 8 of the constitution, which says that the Ba'ath Party is designated "leader of state and society" in Syria.
Additionally, Syrians are eyeing upcoming parliamentary and municipality elections, hoping that the pre-set quota of the Ba'ath will be done away with forever. Under free and democratic elections, the Ba'athists, or any of their socialist allies in the National Progressive Front (NPF), would fail to control the chamber.
Should the authorities decide that the Ba'ath Party is here to stay, then the 64-year old organization needs a serious and major face-lift, even by testimony of its own members. Its leaders are old and ailing; their internal politics are corrupted, their rhetoric and political programs are outdated, and they have no real power base, certainly not among the younger generation. In most cases, they are completely out of touch with the new realities around them that started in Tunisia and Egypt and are now spreading throughout the rest of North Africa and the Middle East.
Even the United States sees Assad in a different light to other leaders in the Arab world, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying this week, "There is a different leader in Syria now, many of the members of congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer."
Most Syrians expect Assad to be the one to launch this "correction movement" within the Syrian system. Leaders lead - it's that simple, and Assad knows what it takes to make his people happy.
Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, Syrians see Assad as part of the solution in their country, and not, like Hosni Mubarak and Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, as part of the problem. He is young, closer to their age than both presidents had been to young Egyptians and Tunisians, and has not been around for too long, as the case with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya or Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Additionally his positions vis-a-vis Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, two topics that are dear to the hearts of grassroots Syrians, have given him a protective shield that other Arab leaders do not enjoy. It is a golden opportunity for the Syrian president to make history - and Syrians are betting on him, rather than on mob violence, to bring change to their country.
This change, they stress, needs to be orderly and non-violent, and only Bashar al-Assad can make that happen.
