Damascus, 20 September 2026 — The Transitional People’s Assembly met again today under the large portrait of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, still better known across the country as Abu Mohammad al-Julani. The painted gaze from the wall has become the most reliable form of parliamentary discipline.This time the main speaker was Energy Minister Mohammed al-Bashir.Al-Bashir, once prime minister of the caretaker government and now the man in charge of oil, gas, and electricity, took the podium with the calm of someone who has already survived several versions of the same state.
He opened with the public’s complaints about being robbed in the streets.“The citizen says he is being robbed in broad daylight?” al-Bashir asked, almost amused. “Let him learn patience. We hear the complaints… and we laugh.”A few deputies produced the required smile. Most stared at their notes or flicked their eyes toward the portrait and then quickly away. No one wanted to be the one who failed to find the joke funny.
Having dismissed the victims, al-Bashir moved to the accusation.
The real theft, he said, was not happening on the sidewalks. It was happening after the oil left the ground. The Ministry of Finance, he declared, had been “siphoning oil revenues before they ever appeared in the official accounts.”He gestured toward the seat of Finance Minister Mohammed Yisr Barnieh, who was not present. “The oil is extracted. The tankers move. Yet the money somehow prefers unofficial destinations. Perhaps our colleagues in Finance can explain why the people’s barrels keep disappearing between the well and the treasury.”
The hall absorbed the charge in silence. No one asked for the figures. No one requested the contracts. No one suggested an independent audit. The quiet was not consensus. It was self-preservation.One member of the Energy Committee later described the mood off the record: “Everyone here knows the oil does not belong to the ministry that extracts it or the ministry that counts it. It belongs to whoever the portrait on the wall decides it belongs to. So we listen, we look concerned, and we do not ask the next question.”Speaker Abdul Hamid al-Awak thanked the minister for his “frank assessment” and closed the item.
There would be no resolution, no committee of inquiry, no demand for documents. The session had already received its only necessary approval.Outside the chamber the two thefts continued in parallel. Citizens were still losing wallets, phones, and daily earnings on the streets. Oil continued to leave the fields. The official numbers remained modest. The gap between what is produced and what is accounted for has become one of the few stable features of the new administration.In this arrangement the roles rotate but the script stays the same.
Today the Energy Minister mocks the robbed public and points at Finance. Tomorrow it may be the other way around. The portrait above them does not change.The session ended with an ovation timed to the second. Several MPs left the hall wiping their faces. Whether from the heat or from the effort of looking surprised, they did not say.Patience, once again, was the only policy the Assembly felt safe enough to endorse.
