Politics in the Syrian Arab Republic takes place in the framework of a semi-presidential republic with nominal multiparty representation in parliament but with most opposition parties suppressed. President Bashar al-Assad, and his Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party have remained dominant forces in the country's politics since the 1970 coup d'état. Until the early stages of the Syrian uprising, the president had broad and unchecked decree authority under a long-standing state of emergency. The end of this emergency was a key demand of the uprising. Superficial reforms in 2011 made presidential decrees subject to approval by the People's Council, the country's legislature, which is itself dominated to parties loyal to the president. The Ba'ath Party is Syria's ruling party and the previous Syrian constitution of 1973 stated that "the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party leads society and the state." At least 167 seats of the 250-member parliament were guaranteed for the National Progressive Front, which is a coalition of the Ba'ath Party and several other much smaller allied parties. The Syrian Army and security services maintained a considerable presence in the neighbouring Lebanese Republic from 1975 until 24 April 2005. Background Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970. After his death in 2000 his son, Bashar al-Assad, succeeded him as president. A surge of interest in political reform took place after Bashar al-Assad assumed power in 2000. Human-rights activists and other civil-society advocates, as well as some parliamentarians, became more outspoken during a period referred to as the "Damascus Spring" (July 2000-February 2001). Assad also made a series of appointments of reform-minded advisors to formal and less formal positions and included a number of similarly oriented individuals in his Cabinet. Neo-Ba'athism The Ba'ath platform is proclaimed succinctly in the party's slogan: "Unity, freedom, and socialism." The party is both socialist, advocating state ownership of the means of industrial production and the redistribution of agricultural land (in practice, Syria's nominally socialist economy is effectively a mixed economy, composed of large state enterprises and private small businesses), and revolutionary, dedicated to carrying a pan-Arab revolution to every part of the Arab world. Founded by Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Christian, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, a Syrian Sunni, and Zaki al-Arsuzi, an alawite, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which was dissolved in 1966 following the 1966 Syrian coup d'état which led to the establishment of one Iraqi-dominated ba'ath movement and one Syrian-led ba'ath movement. The party embraces secularism and