“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time,” suggested Winston Churchill during his defeat in the parliamentary elections after leading Great Britain to victory in World War II. In this context, today’s populist intellectuals, who rely on eye-catching slogans that blind insight, insist that the political transformations in Syria have produced a majority and a minority. According to their claims, the measure for this division is based on numbers tied to religious or sectarian affiliation, without any consideration for political or social values. They argue that the resulting alignment serves to assign blame for the crimes and policies of the past regime to the minorities, subsequently marginalizing them from the Syrian scene, which justifies demands for special protections for these minorities. They willfully ignore that the laws of democratic engagement must produce a majority that holds significant influence in decision-making and policy formation.

It is true that representative democracy, in order not to be reduced to mere electoral processes that yield numbers, requires the presence of objective and subjective conditions that suit the level of cognitive development of individuals and their self-awareness. This is currently absent in Syrian society. Since the military coup of the Baath Party in 1963, followed by the coup of Hafiz al-Assad in 1970 and the hereditary transfer of power to Bashar al-Assad in 2000, Syria has not had elections that produce a political majority capable of managing the affairs of society and the state while protecting minorities on the basis of a social contract agreed upon by all components of Syrian society. Instead, Hafiz al-Assad entrenched his rule and consolidated his power and that of his family relying on the tribal loyalty of his minority sect, cloaked this dependency with the claim of facing the Israeli threat, which he asserted was an existential threat to all Syrians. He disrupted political life, eradicated pluralism, and employed the slogan of national identity, which in his speeches only transcended ethnic, religious, and social classifications, systematically preventing the integration of Syrian society's components and the potential for understanding, tolerance, and coexistence among these components. He transformed state institutions into mere decorations and puppet shows.

As for Bashar al-Assad, like his father, he left state institutions to be overtaken by waves of corruption, continuing to transform the Syrian judiciary into a selective and corrupt system while turning the national media into a tool for producing intellectual and political debauchery—under the supervision of specialized and elite security services adept at violating human rights.

The most significant institution (the military), whose sole purpose in a typical state is to protect the people and the homeland, was dragged by Hafiz al-Assad into committing massacres against entire cities, and Bashar al-Assad embroiled it in a civil war, turning it into a brutal repressive tool (with the invention of barrel bombs) against the majority of the Syrian people (which some refer to as a numerical majority) while still retaining the right to respond to Israeli strikes and violations, just as his father did.

On December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus, causing the complete collapse of his regime along with its rotten, cardboard institutions steeped in corruption. With the free fall of the Assad regime and its institutions, the majority of Syrians found only one position to rally around—the presidency, which has been usurped by Hafiz al-Assad since 1970 and inherited by his son, particularly with the presence of a leadership figure (President Ahmad al-Shara) in this position with a clear program for transitioning to a normal Syrian state, committed to building democratic institutions and firmly re-establishing itself in the Arab and Islamic sphere.

With the rebellion of the remnants of the Assad regime on March 8, 2025 (the remnants of the security apparatus and the dissolved Assad forces) on the Syrian coast and their assault on the General Security institution, the differentiation and sorting between a majority, which represents the will of the Syrian people in all its components—not merely numerical but politically oriented around the presidency—has intensified, especially following the president’s speech and his commitment to hold undisciplined elements accountable and the subsequent formation of a fact-finding committee. This majority agrees on a new social contract focused on establishing democratic institutions for the new Syrian state and producing a democratic system with all controls and accountability mechanisms. 

On the opposing side, there remains a numerical minority that is isolated and cocooned within the remnants of Assad’s sectarian loyalty and its grassroots support. This minority, skeptical of the presidency and lacking faith in the newly formed institutions, claims a uniqueness that distinguishes it from the general will of the Syrian people to the extent of demanding separation from the Syrian state, foolishly ignoring that the general will cannot err and that individuals who sing outside the majority’s tune are the ones in error.

Dr. Osama Ahmad Nizar Saleh