The embattled Syrian president announced a constitutional referendum Wednesday as his forces pummeled Homs and other towns where people cried out for his regime to end.

President Bashar al-Assad set February 26 for the vote on a draft constitution, hailed by his government as an important reform initiative. But analysts and demonstrators ridiculed the effort as "window dressing," the latest in a series of superficial measures undertaken to mollify his critics over the last 11 months.

Members of a committee tasked with drafting the document "reiterated their keenness on a constitution that allows ... public freedoms and political plurality in a way to lay the foundation for a new stage that will enrich Syria's cultural history," the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Former Syrian lawmaker George Jabbour said "clause 8 of the new draft of the constitution is the essential point" of the document. It "allows a multi-party system as opposed to the Baath party being the leading party of the society and the state as stipulated in the current constitution." The Baath party rules Syria.

Jabbour said "special committees will be formed to look into the licensing of new parties in line with the new constitution."

As for presidential elections, they "will be competitive since there is no leading party anymore, and all the parties' candidates are eligible provided their candidacy is endorsed by at least 35 members of parliament," Jabbour said.

Also, the draft forbids the creation of any political activity, or parties, or political gatherings based on religion, ethnicity, tribe or region. It forbids discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, or color.

In Daraa, anti-government demonstrators held up signs indicating they were unimpressed: "If the new constitution doesn't include a decree that guarantees the execution of the murders, any draft will be meaningless," said one that was posted on YouTube. An electronic ticker in the square was even more blunt: "We want Bashar and his agents executed," it read.

In Homs, an opposition activist called the announcement about the referendum "bullshit."

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was more diplomatic. "From our perspective, it looks like he is putting forward a piece of paper that he controls, to a vote that he controls, in an effort to try and maintain control," she said. "And frankly, it is not working in any other capacity, so we don't think this is going to work, either. He knows what he needs to do, if he really cares about his people the violence just needs to come to an end and he needs to get out of the way so we can have a democratic transition."

The calls for reform that predominated in the early months of the uprising have been demands for al-Assad's ouster. Shadi Hamid, director of research for the Brookings Doha Center, called al-Assad's latest moves toward reform "a little bit too late."

"It's not so much the message, but the messenger," he said.

Andrew Tabler, Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called the document "window dressing," citing the banning of many parties and the fact that government permission is needed to form a party.

"It's not going to change the fact that it's a minority-dominated situation," he said. "It will remain a presidential system with powers vested in the hands of the president."

Tabler said al-Assad is using this "tactic to get people to leave the streets."

At least 32 people killed were killed across the country Wednesday, including three children, a woman and a defected soldier, according to the according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition group that tracks reports of violence and organizes anti-government protests.

The deaths occurred in Homs, Idlib, Daraa, Hama, Latakiya, Aleppo, Hasaka, Damascus and the Damascus suburbs.

In southwestern Syria, near the Jordanian border, al-Assad's forces stormed the village of Sahm al-Golan looking for military defectors, according to a member of the opposition in the town who asked to be identified only as Abu Issam out a fear of reprisal.

Syrian forces shelled the town and used tanks, forcing many residents to flee toward the Jordanian border, Issam said.

"Yesterday there were defections in the neighboring town of Tseel, and the Syrian forces attacked the town and could not find any defectors. So they came today to Sahm al-Golan," he said.

In the same region of the country, the Syrian army reportedly took control of Zabadani, where soldiers and tanks made a show of force along the streets, according to Mohamed Ali, an opposition Syrian Revolution Coordination union member for the town.

Artillery and automatic machinegun fire echoed through Homs Wednesday, a city of 1 million people, CNN's Arwa Damon reported from inside the city. Opposition activists say government forces are intent on flattening every neighborhood that might hold dissidents.

The Syrian regime said an "armed terrorist group" sabotaged a diesel pipeline near the Homs neighborhoods of Baba Amr and Sultanieh, state-run media said.

But the LCC told CNN that government warplanes flying over Baba Amr blew up an oil pipeline. Amateur video showed columns of smoke on the ground.

There are "cases of suffocation in the neighborhood of Baba Amr from the smoke that is developing after the explosions that hit the oil pipelines, while the neighborhood is still being shelled," the LCC said.