In the beginning was the party. The Arab socialist Ba'ath party that Hafez al-Assad joined in 1947, the year it was founded, while he was still a schoolboy. And although the party was illegal at the time, its promise of equality appealed to poor young men from religious minorities like Assad.
Today the ninth congress of the Syrian Ba'ath party will elect Dr Bashar al-Assad, son of the late president, as its secretary-general, the post held by Hafez al-Assad for the past 30 years.
Under the Syrian constitution, the party chooses the country's president, vice-presidents, army commanders. The party will also nominate Dr Bashar to be Syria's next president, a step to be confirmed by the rubber-stamp parliament on June 25th and a "popular" referendum next month.
Dr Bashar arrived 10 minutes early at the opening session, slipping into the massive marble and glass conference centre almost unnoticed. Armed republican guards had cordoned off a two-kilometre perimeter outside. Hundreds of black flags lined the approaches to the building, and secret policemen lurked among the pillars, Kalashnikovs protruding from their suit jackets. The three-day congress is all part of an intricate, legalistic, institutional theatre contrived to legitimise the Assad dynasty.
After Dr Bashar took his front row centre seat, dozens of photographers and television cameramen swarmed around him. The 34-year-old ophthalmologist sat as his father did in so many portraits and statues; staring straight ahead, his feet planted squarely on the floor, his hands on his knees. A giant portrait of Assad senior, painted on black velvet, looked down from above the stage, along with a banner quoting the Great Leader: "All our party's congresses are important. They discover the mistakes of the past. They foresee the horizons of the future."
Although party congresses are supposed to take place every five years, 15 years have passed since the last one. Selim Lawzi, a Lebanese newspaper editor who dared to report discord over policy towards Iraq at an earlier congress, was assassinated.
After two hours of speeches extolling the God-like wisdom of Hafez al-Assad and predicting equal genius for Dr Bashar, a few journalists were even allowed to shake hands with "Comrade Dr Bashar", or "General Dr Bashar" as delegates called him. Perhaps it was his youth, the way he stooped slightly to greet well-wishers, or the faint stutter when he thanked us in English for attending, but Dr Bashar gave the impression of vulnerability, of being terribly alone. The government newspaper Tishreen reported that Syria was "in safe hands" in this, "the most dangerous phase of its modern history".
And yet the congress is proof of Dr Bashar's ability to sideline rivals and promote friends and relatives. Close to 1,000 delegates will today elect seven or eight new members to the Ba'ath party's politburo or "regional command" - regional because in Ba'athist ideology, Syria is merely a region of the Arab nation.
Most of the new politburo members are Dr Bashar's men: the Prime Minister, Mr Mohamed Mustafa Miro, the former governor of Aleppo and economist who was chosen by Dr Bashar in March; Mr Miro's deputy in charge of the economy, Mr Naji Aattari; Mr Adnan Omran, who became information minister in the same cabinet reshuffle; Mr Farouk al-Shara'a, Foreign Minister whom Dr Bashar trusts not to deviate from his father's line in negotiations with Israel; Mr Manaf Tlass, son of the Defence Minister, Mr Mustafa Tlass, and a childhood friend of Dr Bashar.
Dr Bashar will need allies. Reliable sources in Damascus say the old guard - Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, for example, who is nominally acting president - are disgruntled. They feel they devoted their lives to the late president and the party, only to see this young upstart promoted over their heads.
Since Dr Bashar became Syria's heir apparent on the death of his brother six years ago, he took control of policy towards Lebanon from Mr Khaddam and gently edged him out of political life. Gen Ali Douba, the former head of military security, was another victim of Dr Bashar's reforming zeal. He has been replaced by Mr Atef Shawkat, who is married to Bashar's sister Bushra.
Mr Michel Aflaq, the cofounder of the Ba'ath party who was later sentenced to death by Hafez al-Assad (the sentence was rescinded) said that tribalism, sectarianism and the oppression of women were the shackles of Arab society. Thirty-seven years of Ba'athist revolution have not broken them in Syria. On the contrary, the Alawi sect, to which the Assad family belongs, is more dominant than ever and women hold no positions of real importance. Perhaps it was this poor record that led Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper to report that the Ba'ath party was "a corpse". Like President Assad.
