President Bashar al-Assad's speech to his new ministers on Saturday was certainly an improvement on the speech he gave to the Syrian parliament at the end of last month. He acknowledged the protesters' grievances, touched on most of the key areas where reform is needed and urged a more open, consultational style of government.

Had he made the same speech at any other time during the last 11 years, without being pushed, it would surely have been hailed as a great step forward. But everyone knows that he made it on Saturday because he had to – just a day after Syria witnessed its biggest demonstrations so far.

Even if we take the speech (and its promises) at face value, the message is clear: change only happens in Syria when people protest in large numbers, and in order to prevent any backsliding they will have to keep up the pressure.

So far, though, all we really have is a declaration of intent. The first test of the intentions will come later this week when new security laws are rushed through, allowing the 48-year-old state of emergency to be lifted. 

How much of an improvement this will be remains to be seen. It depends on what the new laws say and how they will be implemented, but in the meantime I'll remain sceptical. Drafting anti-terrorism laws that strike a reasonable balance between security and liberty is a very complex business, and not something that can be done properly in the space of a few days. 
Similarly with the proposed new law on demonstrations which, as the president recognised in his speech, will present "a challenge to the police because they are not prepared for such things".

He also spoke of drawing a line "between reform and sabotage" while avoiding the crucial question of where such a line might be drawn. "There are clear differences between the demands for reform and the intentions of creating chaos and sabotage," he said – though in its treatment of protesters up to now, the regime has made little distinction between the two.

In some ways, Assad's political strategy is smarter than that of other Arab leaders. He is not throwing money at the problem in the hope that it will go away, as some of the Gulf states have done. Nor is he making wild promises as Ben Ali did in Tunisia (300,000 new jobs within two years). Instead, he has set out a series of goals that (with the exception of lifting the emergency law) cannot be achieved instantly and is asking Syrians to trust him to deliver.

The problem here, though, is that he is hoping people will give him the benefit of the doubt when his record on delivery in the past has been less than brilliant. On Saturday, he spoke (yet again) about fighting corruption and made some sensible proposals – including one that officials should be required to declare their assets. But then he deflated it somewhat by saying: "We started this [declaration of assets] process about three years ago, but it wasn’t at ministers’ level and it was a pilot and the data wasn’t really used." These efforts to clean up officialdom will also look half-hearted unless and until action is taken to tackle corruption within the president's own family – an problem that Syrians are very much aware of.

It may take a few days to judge what impact the president's speech has made on the streets but I doubt that it will induce many protesters to give up their struggle. Once again, it looks like a case of too little and too late.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 17 April 2011