Rasha Saad says the race has begun over who will take Al-Assad's place In his daily column in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Jihad Al-Khazen wrote that during a meeting with former Egyptian vice president Omar Suleiman, he told Al-Khazen that he suspected that Gamal Mubarak, the eldest son of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, was behind the attempt on his life in an ambush near Kobri Al-Kobba medical complex on 30 January 2011. "Omar Suleiman, the then vice president, believed it likely that Gamal Mubarak was behind the attempt because he thought that Suleiman ruined the idea of Gamal Mubarak becoming president of Egypt," Al-Khazen wrote. Al-Khazen wrote that he was surprised that many Egyptians celebrated Suleiman's recent death and gloated and railed insults at him on Facebook and Twitter. According to Al-Khazen, Suleiman, who died two weeks ago in a US hospital, "suffered injustices when he was alive, and more injustices when he died." The first reason for this, explains Al-Khazen, is ignorance. "He [Suleiman] was the head of the General Intelligence services, working in the shadows, with no direct contact with ordinary citizens." The second reason, Al-Khazen continues, is his clash with the Muslim Brotherhood, or "his war against the Islamist group despite its huge popularity in Egypt." Meanwhile, turning to Syria, who will rule the country and how was the question posed by pundits this week. According to many, the fall of Bashar Al-Assad is only a matter of when and not if and the race to inherit power is on. In the Saudi-funded Asharq Al-Awsat Abdel-Rahman Al-Rashed noted that "the race to inherit power after the fall of the Al-Assad regime has accelerated after signs of its collapse became clear to everyone, even Syria's allies." The fall of the Syrian regime in its final days will not be easy, as some have imagined, and the inheritance of power will be even more difficult than the scene we are currently facing, Al-Rashed warns. According to Al-Rashed, everyone is possessed by a desire to move Syria onwards to a different future, "and bid farewell to four decades of iron-fisted rule." It is too early, Al-Rashed wrote, to draw a Syrian political map, but it is not too early for the Syrians to think about gathering together collectively under a new flag. From there they can think about mechanisms of political representation and action, and later the formation of a government, Al-Rashed explains. "No one wants the Al-Assad regime to fall, only for its formula to remain in place, ie a totalitarian, security-based regime that abused the Syrians ever since it seized power in the Baathist coup of 1963," Al-Rashed maintains. Al-Rashed advises that the only safe choice to avoid the risk of a vacuum in the post-Assad phase is a broad umbrella that accommodates everyone, leaving the majority of the Syrian people with the option to choose later on. "It is not a question of settling scores, but about a shared future," Al-Rashed wrote. The emergence of defected Brigadier General Manaf Tlass as a possible replacement for Al-Assad caused mixed reaction among pundits. Judging from his interviews after the defection, Mashari Al-Zaydi wrote that Tlass is convinced that the collapse of the Al-Assad regime should be limited to Bashar Al-Assad and his inner circle, whose hands are stained with the blood of the Syrian people. Al-Zaydi hailed that Tlass spoke "clearly and frankly about his commitment to the unity of the Syrian state and social fabric" and stressed that the Syrians must limit the damage to this as much as possible. Thus according to Al-Zaydi, the general has a number of advantages: he is from the "marrow" of the house of Al-Assad, while he inherited -- from his father General Mustafa Tlas -- friendship with the Al-Assad clan." And on the other hand, he is a member of Syria's Sunni majority, as well as being part of the army and military class. "Therefore Tlass is a modern Sunni general with close ties to the house of Al-Assad and who recently defected from the regime," Al-Zaydi wrote. According to Al-Zaydi, one of the most important things put forward by Tlass was his warning against the idea of marginalisation "which is certainly a dangerous idea which was tasted in Iraq [debaathification] and whose impact remains full of woe and destruction." "This is an idea based on an instinct of revenge, while also being very impractical. What is required is to limit the damage as much as possible. This would be the ideal situation," Al-Zaydi concludes. Contrary to this view Abdel-Bari Atwan believes that Tlas is being imposed by other powers on the Syrians who can not accept him as their leader. In 'Who pushes Manaf Tlas for Syria's presidency?' Atwan noted that by observing the hospitality and intense media focus which surrounded Tla's defection "it could be said that several fronts are pushing him to be the future leader of Syria with full disregard to the opinion of the Syrian people themselves." In Al-Quds Al-Arabi Atwan noted that history tells us that every victorious revolution is supposed to create new leaders out of those who led the struggle for change and were never reluctant in giving the required sacrifices. Those new leaders then bring a comprehensive political and social change and institute a new regime led by new figures, Atwan explains. Atwan wrote that Brigadier General Tlas is a pretty handsome man; he could stand together with any of Hollywood's big names but his only two achievements in life was being a childhood friend of President Bashar Al-Assad and being a commander of the 105 division of the Syrian Republican Guard forces. "Did the Syrian people lose more than 20,000 martyrs only to see one of the figures of the old regime stepping up to the presidency after paving the way for him by the same countries which are arming and funding the Free Syrian Army?" Atwan asked. The Syrians are rising up against the Assad family dynasty. That is what they say and what the commanders of the military opposition say, too, Atwan argued. "But do they want to replace the Al-Assad family with another one, ironically known to be the closest friends to the Assads?"
