Fake democracy and eternal President

By Dr. Zaher Baadarani
President of the Syrian Future Movement (SFM)

Day after day, the world’s attention increasingly turns to the United States and its heated presidential race, anticipating the outcome of the ballot boxes and the winner of the upcoming presidential term!

While it’s evident to any observer the age-related frailties, illness threats, and potential death surrounding Biden, and his rival Donald Trump with his ongoing legal proceedings and concerned courts, we find that the candidates of the strongest, largest, and greatest country in the world are drawn towards the race track, armed with the vitamins of democracy and its infinite space, and supported by their fluctuating popular bases, and the influence of pressing local and international issues affecting the voter’s mood until the last moment.

While history records examples of U.S. Presidents and White House candidates who were unable to complete their terms or run for a second presidential term due to illness and related reasons—such as “Lyndon B. Johnson”, who decided not to run for a second term due to health problems and declining popularity resulting from the Vietnam War, in addition to John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Millard Fillmore, and Gerald Ford, who all served partial terms in the White House (due to the death or resignation of their predecessors), and were removed from office for many reasons, despite all of them completing their partial terms!

There are American Presidents who were legally or politically prevented from running or completing their term of office, such as: “Richard Nixon”, the only U.S. President who resigned in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal, as well as Bill Clinton, the forty-second President of the United States, who indeed faced legal proceedings during his presidency, being tried in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice due to his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a scandal that led to impeachment proceedings against him, yet he was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in February 1999, allowing him to complete his presidential term, though he did not run for a second term thereafter. As for Donald Trump, the current candidate, he indeed faced two impeachment attempts, the first in 2019 and the second in 2021, but he was not removed from office and completed his presidential term, undoubtedly one of the reasons among many for his loss of a second presidential term.

It is worth noting here that the U.S. Constitution sets the legal procedures for impeaching the President, but there is no judicial text that directly prevents the President from running or completing his term; impeachment requires a vote by Congress, not a judicial decision.

While we notice a plurality in American Presidents and changes in their personas due to illness and other factors, within a democratic practice that is the strongest, most intense, and cleanest globally, and while we find the President of the largest country in the world subject to judicial monitoring, prosecution, and impeachment calls, we find in Syria an eternal president in power, inheriting it within a clear republican system!
Neither the diabetes that Hafez al-Assad (1971 – 2000) suffered from, which caused him episodes of coma or debilitation preventing him from completing many duties, nor the crimes caused by his successor Bashar al-Assad in Syria since 2011 to this day, and before him, his father’s crimes in Hama (1982), placed them under the sway of any judicial trial, even if symbolic. In Syria, there is no reason for resignation, dismissal, impeachment, or even accountability of a president (Syria’s Assad!).

What kind of democracy does today’s heir to power in Damascus sing praises of as he attempts to polish his image among those who remain in Syria (not out of love for him) but by force and hatred after the doors of migration abroad were closed to them?
Will the year 2028 witness the reelection of the tyrant of Syria (Bashar Hafez al-Assad) as President of the glorious Syrian Republic, coinciding with the election campaign of a new U.S. President in the same year?

Or will the people’s revolution have matured and produced a personality behind whom Syrians of various orientations can unite to rebuild the human foundation on the principles of democracy, which have become the basics of any successful and fruitful political endeavor?

Dr. Zaher Ihssan Baadarani
Presidency office
Article
Syrian Future Movement (SFM)