Tips for the Pres on his next speech

Tomorrow the head of the Syrian regime will give a speech. These are the top 5 things Bashar Assad should and shouldn't mention in his speech.

Five Things Bashar Shouldn’t mention in tomorrow’s planned speech:

1) Terrorists, armed gangs that have terrified and murdered the people
2) Key terms such as salafists, infiltrators (mundaseen), extremists etc
3) Global, nay! Universal conspiracy theory against Syria and how the regime has defeated that conspiracy.
4) Denying the wrong doing of the regime during the uprising
5) Planning more useless reforms that won’t happen and setting up new committees that won’t do anything (the head of the committee will usually come up and say the people are not ready for such reforms).

Five Things he should do/mention:

1) Apologize and accept responsibility for everything that has happened in the past few months and pay respect to all those that have been murdered.
2) Withdraw the military from the entire country and end the military’s role in this crisis.
3) Start a constitutional reform and end the Baath control of the country as well as releasing all political prisoners and those that have been abducted during the uprising.
4) Set date for early and free presidential election/plan for new government
5) Allow Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan back in to the country and allow foreign and independent media into the country.

I just want to make two further points:
- The only hope I think for this crisis to end with the least damage and through a smooth transition to a more representative system of the Syrian people is when this regime does the above. The crisis in Syria is very similar to that in Yemen, there are still those that support the president and there are those that don't which will make this crisis go on for a much longer period. Lets hope that the regime in Syria and that Bashar Assad has more sense and is more patriotic than Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and is able to see that his stay in power will only result in further deterioration of the situation in Syria especially if the regime keeps on carrying out their security measures against the protesters. I think I still have some faith that Bashar will do the right thing tomorrow. I hope he does for the sake of this country.

- In the free Syria that we all envision we should all respect the opinions of everyone even those that still stand with the current regime. Even though we call for the end of the regime and the end of the reign of the Ba'ath party in Syria, that doesn't mean their presence in the political spectrum in Syria should be erased.