The Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat is reporting today that Syria’s ruling party, the Baath Party, is planning to amend its charter, ditch the socialist tenets, and perhaps even change its name. The article, The Syrian Baath Plans to Dissolve its National Leadership and Bring Down its Socialist Motto (it is the third article from the top, for Arabic readers):

Informed Syrian sources have said that the national conference of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which will be held most likely the seventh or the eighth of the coming month, with make a decision to dissolve the party’s national leadership. The engineer Ayman Abd al-Nur told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that it is expected that the first conference in a quarter of a century will decide to transfer the national leadership of the Baath Party to a National Council which will be headed by a Supreme Administrative Office.

Abd al-Nur added that it was not known yet whether or not President Bashar Assad would head this upper organization or if he would appoint one of the party leaders to head it, except that he did signal that the largest part of the process of change to the constitution of the Baath Party and its implimenting law and basic ideology had already been performed, and this meant the substitution of the phrase “social justice” for the term “socialism” and the phrase “democracy” for “freedom.” And following on what had been rumored as to the existence of ideas calling for changing the name of the party to become the “Democratic Party” Ähizb al-demaqratiya, I’m not making this upÅ instead of the Arab Socialist Baath,” Abd al-Nur emphasized that this matter was set for discussion for the conference.

I don’t believe for a second that this will mean a change in political leadership in Syria, but this may be significant for two reasons. One, I think it is another sign of the immense pressure the Syrian regime is facing right now. As noted, they haven’t had one of these conferences since the 1970s. Two, I suspect that there probably is some sincerity in moving away from socialism. The Syrian economy is more than stagnant, it is virtually lifeless, and this is increasing public dissatisfaction. I’m sure that the Baath will not give up control over key industries, but I would not be surprised if we saw an economic opening of sorts begin to accelerate.

And for those not familiar with Arab nationalist rhetoric, the word ???????freedom??????? is used a lot ???????? Saddam used to say it all the time ???????? so if they stop saying it, that would be a significant change in slogans.

Contributed by Kirk H. Sowell at Window on the Arab World, and More!