SNC to choose new leader in Istanbul

The Syrian National Council (SNC) will meet during the weekend to replace Burhan Ghalioun who resigned as the leader of the opposition bloc late last month, SNC officials said on Monday. The meeting will take place Saturday and Sunday in Istanbul, where a vote might be abandoned if there is a “consensus” candidate as it appears to be, the sources said on condition of anonymity. “So far the consensus candidate is Abdel Basset Sayda,” a Kurdish member of the SNC’s executive office, one source said, while the other confirmed that Sayda could be appointed as the new SNC leader. Sayda, who lives in exile in Sweden, joined the SNC as an “independent activist,” according to his friend Massud Akko, who is also Kurdish. He is member of the SNC’s executive bureau and heads the bloc’s human rights department. He was born in 1956 in Amuda, a mostly Kurdish city in the northeastern Syrian province of Hassakeh. “He is honest, level-headed and cultured,” Akko said. Ghalioun tendered his resignation on May 17 to avert divisions within the opposition bloc, after activists on the ground accused him of monopolising power. His resignation was accepted the following week. He had led the SNC by consensus since the bloc’s formation in October last year and was elected chairman in a vote held in Rome on May 15.