Al-Jaafari’s question and the scandal of the opposition

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Neither the show appearances which the group of Riyadh was eager to include in the work paper which it presented to the UN Envoy Steffan De Mistura for the political solution will succeed, nor the speech of De Mistura about the objectivity and the comprehensiveness of the paper will succeed in hiding the constitutional, national, legal, moral scandal which this paper is based on, In the light of the elaborateness in the explanation and details in the titles of the paper about a transitional judicial body, a transitional military council and the dealing with the form of the relation between it and the transitional ruling body, the fundamental question which the Head of the Official Syrian negotiating delegation the Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari has presented two years ago to the Former Head of the negotiating delegation of the opposition will still present; who will form this body in order to form these branched bodies, and who will set the regulations work list for it?

At that time, the Businessman Hadi Al-Bahra who has taken courses about the assets of negotiation in the United Nations as in Paris with American and British experts along with his colleague Anas Al-Abdeh, after they dilated on explaining the resting of the negotiations on Geneva Statement and their priority in applying the clause of the transitional governing body which it stipulated, during the presence of the UN Envoy Alkdar Al-Ibrahimi who regretted that he failed today, and said that if the Arabs listened to the Russian concept of the solution, then the crisis and the war on Syria would end four years ago, the Head of the Syrian negotiating delegation at that day and today the Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari has asked all who will form this body, the silence and the looks among the three prevailed, they shared the answer, we agree here, that Al-Ibrahimi will go to the Security Council and transmits the result of the understanding, he will issue a decision according the chapter VII by suspending the work under the Syrian constitution and putting Syria under the UN mandate, because it is the only way to appoint a governing body outside the provisions of the national constitution in any country, and outside the institutional context which is stipulated by the constitution, then it is possible for the Security Council to appoint the governing body with the approved names that have the approval of the participating countries, and they will be given the powers of managing the Syrian affairs according to chapter VII for two or three years to restructure the military, security, and the judiciary  institutions and making the necessary preparation to set a new constitution and holding elections regarding, as well as to go the Security Council to lift the mandate on Syria and return its usurped sovereignty to its new institutions.

Today the group of Riyadh has elaborated in its boring presentation about its paper for what was in Geneva two years ago, which entitled the formation of the subsidiary body institutions which aim to neglect the answer of the question who will form the transitional governing body and what is its sovereignty cost, which starts by asking the Security Council to suspend the work with the constitution and having control over Syria, while the role of the Syrians ends here, in order to start the role of the countries which will add the names which represent them, and which have negotiations on how to share the new Syria through its representatives, and linking every valuable decision including the security, weapons, army, foreign policy, the privileges of oil, the plans of reconstruction, and the return of the refuges and others with understandings that must be hold between the original decision-makers in the Security Council and approved by their Syrian representatives in what is so-called as the governing body and their representatives in the bodies and the sub judicial, military, security, oil, financial, economic, and others assemblies. The time passes so long and the appointed representatives in the body will wonder about the cause of the raise of chapter VII on Syria and embargoing the sale of weapons to its army which the international decision-makers have formed it on their way, not feeling afraid to Israel’s security, therefore they will remember what has happened in Iraq and Libya, so the exit of the chapter VII is not similarof its entry.

The group of Riyadh knows and the “objective” De Mistura knows that  the talk about indirect ways other than the chapter VII, the mandate, suspending the constitution and the abolition of the sovereignty to produce a transitional governing body will not lead to anywhere, there is not a president for the Republic in the Syrian Constitution that has the right of abandonment of the powers or the authority partially or totally, and there is no possibility to amend the constitution to make this possible without a popular referendum according to the constitution itself, and when it is agreed  that the judgment of the Syrian people is possible and agreed, then let it choose who will rule the Syrians through the organization of the general elections, this is possible in the UN resolution 2254, but the question is in how to manage the country till this is achieved and the preparation for that moment through new constitution and electoral mechanisms, therefore the only way to go on according to the Syrian constitution and the movement through it and through what it leads to institutions towards new constitution and elections on the basis of this constitution is the formation of a unified government that is responsible of the management of the country under the current presidency, and the formation of the experts’ committee to set a new constitution, in addition to the referendum of the Syrians, as well  resorting to them at the ballot boxes to choose who will occupy the institutions and the constitutional positions on that basis, it means first, the preserving of the Syrian sovereignty , and then the Syrian decision on one hand,  and the abandonment of it on the other hand, it is the negotiating equation in Geneva between the adherence till reaching a new constitution and new elections under the national Syrian management of the country  and between putting the countries under the mandate and to go on like Bremer De Mistura in Iraq knowing that they were already together.

Surely the difference today is that the statement of Geneva became from the past and the memories despite mentioning it in the UN resolution through introductions to reach the text of the resolution, it is a text that based on resolving that Syria’s affair belongs to the Syrians themselves, and the resorting to elections is to resolve the fate of the constitutional positions and institutions, and on the UN resolution basis  and the balances of the current powers’ balances which led to it, and after the birth of the resolution and linking the armistice with the attempts of preventing the protection behind Al-Nusra front and the attempts to improve its image, and then the closure of the Turkish-Syrian borders, as well as the change which was made by the Russian decision of announcing the withdrawal and opening the door of confrontation’s threat  if the negotiations fail, in the meantime the Syrian army which is ready and has all the necessary means of achieving victory from all the allies is in the field, so neither the Security Council nor Syria, nor the field nor the political and legal ceiling of the negotiation were there.

The group of Riyadh is dreaming of repeating the example of Bremer because it’s their only way for ruling and they know their size among their people, while the country of Bremer sent its Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow to discover what can be done lest the confrontations explode by the failure of negotiations, after it understood the meaning of the decision of the Russian withdrawal which the group of Riyadh is dreaming that it is a pressure on the Syrian President to accept their transitional body.

The war is as the negotiations between a national sovereignty project and a project for selling the sovereignty and home searching for a throne.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,