DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – When she heard about an upcoming celebration in her village on the occasion of Assad winning the Syrian presidency, Samia Hassan (38 years old) angrily wondered, “Who will pay the singer? How much? How did all these funds become available to spend?”
Hassan is an employee in a spinning factory east of the capital, Damascus, where the work is long and stressful and the salaries, as are the case for all Syrians, are low and hardly cover basic needs.
Hassan says her coworker told her that “the parties should be free, as singers should celebrate for free to show their love and loyalty to their president.”
The celebrations that the country is currently witnessing were previously witnessed during the elections of former president Hafez Assad.
Among the many similarities between the two events include poor economic conditions the government’s failure to spend on many necessities on the pretext of the lack of financial resources, as the Ministry of Finance claims, and failure to improve wages or raise the standard of living or services.
Concerts were held a few days before the elections, then soon took an organized form after the results were announced, various singers including Ali and Hussein al-Deek, George Wassouf, Wafeeq Habib sang, and they were held in all governorates.
The celebrations intensified without the attention of those in charge of them, as their noise coincided with the exams for the baccalaureate and the ninth certificates.
The noise in the areas near the homes of students became a shock to their families, causing great tension for students and their families, especially before exams.
Jinan Ali (39) says that she stays at home with her son Ahmed and urges him to study, either with promises or threats.
Ali prevents her son from leaving home and going to the celebrations in his village in Tartus, making him study for his ninth grade exams.
Rami Abboud (40), a trader from Latakia, asked, “Isn’t it time for these parties, funded by robbers, to end?”
He added, “Are the organizers of these parties not afraid of being infected by coronavirus light of the presence of all these numbers of people who gather at every party, wherever it is?”
The number of people infected with the coronavirus in Syrian government areas has reached 24,639 confirmed cases, including 1,790 deaths, and 21,630 cases of recovery.
For or against
One of them posted on his Facebook page saying: “Wouldn’t it be better to allocate the money spent on singers and concerts on something useful for the people, such as buying a bus to reduce traffic, or improving the electricity situation?”
What is remarkable is that the majority of the commenters did not like his proposal, and he received many comments that attacked him, indicating that the parties held to celebrate the president’s victory are “an indisputable patriotic act.”
As one commentator commented: “People need this joy after their difficult lives during the ten years of war.”
From the Ba’ath Party
When asking a member of a Division Commander in the ruling Ba’ath Party, in Damascus, about his role in financing the parties, he stressed that “a large part of the money comes from donations to the party.”
The party member, who preferred not to be named, told North Press that the party, in turn, “financed singers’ concerts, starting at a price of 200,000 Syrian pounds for an unknown singer, up to millions according to the singer’s fame.”
The source added that “the billboards that fill the streets are offered by the private sector; those in charge of them deal with as advertising campaigns, as billboards are published in the streets with the name of their owners.”
Social media pages reported cases of suffocation and fainting that occurred last Thursday when the masses gathered for a party held in the Sports City in Latakia, due to the great turnout.