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May 18th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
But the withdrawal of the LCC, which commands considerable respect from the
protesters on Syria’s streets, would leave the coalition vulnerable to
accusations that it had become an Islamist rump, raising serious questions
about its viability.
Mr Ghalioun has led the SNC since its formation last September, but his reign
has always been a tormented one.
Disjointed, ill-tempered and riven along ideological and sectarian lines, the
coalition has seemed incapable on agreeing even a basic strategy to confront
President Assad, its competing factions unable to make common cause despite
sharing a common foe.
Hopes for an end to the debilitating divisions were raised when Mr Ghalioun
won re-election with two-thirds of the vote at an SNC meeting in Rome on
Tuesday. He pledged to unify the coalition, announcing plans to take charge
of the armed rebellion against Mr Assad and bring organisation to its
inchoate ranks.
But it subsequently emerged that many activists, most of them secular and
liberal, had stayed away from the vote, leaving Mr Ghalioun to rely on the
Muslim Brotherhood for re-election.
A professor at the Sorbonne who has spent decades in exile, Mr Ghalioun has
provided the SNC with an urbane and moderate face that has sat easily with
the coalition’s Western interlocutors.
But secular figures within the movement have accused him of being a frontman
for Islamist interests within the opposition, saying he has allowed the
Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the largest number of seats in the council,
disproportionate influence.
Many activists within Syria also complain of a widening gulf with the SNC’s
leadership, saying they risk arrest, torture and death on a daily basis
while Mr Ghalioun and his allies hold pointless conferences in foreign
hotels.
“We have seen nothing in the past months except political incompetence in
the SNC and a total lack of consensus between its vision and that of the
revolutionaries,” the LCC said in a statement.
By leaving his resignation open-ended, Mr Ghalioun’s stated intention to
resign may be insincere, with observers suggesting that he was bluffing in
an attempt to rally the coalition behind him.
But his critics say a new head – perhaps George Sabra, a Christian dissident
who challenged him in Tuesday’s vote – could reunify the council, helping to
convince the outside world that it was a genuinely viable alternative to the
Assad regime.
Western and Arab powers have refrained from recognising the SNC as a
government-in-exile because of its divisions.
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