Sabra elected chief of Syrian opposition

AFP

DOHA VETERAN dissident George Sabra, a Christian former communist, was elected president of the Syrian National Council opposition bloc at a meeting in Doha, on Friday.

The SNC’s 41-member general secretariat, itself newly elected, chose Sabra, who garnered 28 votes, as part of efforts to revamp the group working to oust President Bashar al Assad.

Sabra, in his first statement as SNC chief, vowed to “work with other components of the Syrian opposition to accelerate the fall of the (president’s) criminal regime.” However, a major activist network quit the bloc on Friday amid divisions between the opposition, and other anti- Assad groups went ahead with a unity meeting in Doha even though the SNC had asked for a delay.

The SNC had sought to meet on Saturday after choosing a new chief, having already elected the secretariat, a third of them Islamists, and as it faced charges of not being representative enough.

“We requested a postponement of 24 hours — we are in the electoral process,” Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the new team, said before Sabra was elected.

But the Local Coordination Committees, a major network of on-theground activists, said it had withdrawn from the SNC over its failure to adopt “serious and effective” reforms to make it more representative.

Other opposition groups, who were waiting at a hotel in the Qatari capital, decided to go ahead with their meeting brokered by Qatar and the Arab League on Friday evening, regardless of the SNC’s demand for a delay.

The umbrella group elected 11 members to sit on its executive committee, including Sabra. Four members are new and three others are Islamists.

“We hope that these free and transparent elections will be a model for free elections in Syria,” Sabra said, stressing that the new executive represents all sections of society including, for the first time, the tribes.

Representatives of various opposition groups were said to be close to reaching an agreement over a united structure when they gathered on Thursday in the Qatari capital. But SNC representatives voiced reservations about the initiative, based on a proposal tabled by prominent dissident Riad Seif with apparent US support.