The addiction of power

Enjoying power is an addiction, perhaps the only one, that has no cure. We can see it all the time in companies, in politics, in institutions. Those who access power cling to it desperately. It is in politics, of course, where it becomes more ostensible. Every day we witness the sad spectacle of presidents of republics who, when the end of their mandates approaches, commit all kinds of irregularities, violate the constitutions and the laws in the search for some trick to perpetuate themselves.

There are many examples, one could almost say that this is the norm in most second and third world countries. There we have Vladimir Putin who, after twenty years of obscene rule in Russia, has just mobilized all the resources he manages, which are many, to sign up to remain until 2036! There are naive people who wonder how it is possible for them not to get tired. No, they don't. Hardly anyone gives up willingly. Only when the weapons of those who want to imitate them are pointed at them, do they surrender.

The most despicable example right now is that of Bachar al-Asad, the president of Syria. It is said that when he took charge in 2000 at the express wish of his father, the dictator Hafez al-Asar, who wanted to leave him an inheritance, he refused and argued that he had no vocation. The position was destined for his older brother, but he died in an accident and it was up to him to take over. He was a young, UK-trained ophthalmologist, married to Asma, a beautiful, intelligent woman with no other ambitions than professional banking in the City of London.

Just seeing their young, modern look that promised to change the image of the inherited dictatorship was enough for them to do well. They opened up the image of a different Syria. On their visit to Spain the impression left by the marriage could not have been better. Until the so-called Arab springs broke out in 2010, opening up the hope of freedom and democracy to so many oppressed peoples. But Bachar and, above all, his corrupt family circle, opposed any change and war broke out. 

A civil war, soon with various foreign interferences, which after ten years, half a million dead and millions of refugees still remain. International efforts to restore peace have failed. Many peace proposals consider Bachar to be the obstacle and he had to leave the field free for the country to enter a democratic phase of reconciliation and reunification. But the president and his wife had already taken the pleasure of his office. And they are hopelessly clinging to abandoning it. The fact that their obstinacy continues to count the dead every day does not seem to matter to them.