The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has expressed sympathy with the protests that have swept through the Arab world following the popular uprising in Tunisia that resulted in the overthrow of the regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in mid-January. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on January 31st, Mr Assad acknowledged that Syria shared some of the symptoms that had made people desperate for change in Tunisia and Egypt, and that part of the reason was internal failures of the governments concerned, including his own. However, he also blamed the West for much of the discontent in the region. Mr Assad said that his own government was more secure than some of the other Arab regimes because its foreign policy was more closely aligned with the beliefs of its own people, with respect to issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the US-led invasion of Iraq. He talked at length about the measures he had taken to create a platform for reform, for example through allowing private newspapers and fostering the spread of the Internet. (In February the government lifted its ban on Facebook, a social networking site.) However, he carefully avoided making any commitment to reform Syria's political institutions, which are still dominated by the Baath party-the constitution, as amended in 1973, states that the party must hold a majority of seats in all elected bodies. The most recent party congress, in 2005, called for a commission to be set up to study constitutional reform, but there has been no sign of any action since. An election for the 250-seat, unicameral parliament is scheduled to be held in April.

Mr Assad's confidence in Syria's stability has been borne out to some extent by the tepid response to calls for a "day of rage" in Damascus, the capital, on February 5th. Protesters were vastly outnumbered by the security forces. However, this did not necessarily signify contentment with the regime. During Mr Assad's rule dozens of campaigners for political reform have been jailed, and membership of the Muslim Brotherhood is still subject to a death sentence (although lengthy jail terms are more common). Most Syrians are too young to remember the extreme violence of the Muslim Brotherhood uprising between 1979 and 1982, which culminated in a military onslaught on Hama, a city to the north of Damascus, in February 1982 in which as many as 20,000 people were killed, but fear of what the security forces might do remains a deterrent for anyone contemplating active opposition to the regime.