Coalition campaign against Assad's elections costs $400.000, activists demand investigation

(Translation by Dani Murad)

Activists demanded the new leadership of the Syrian coalition to present a statement of expenditure in regard to the $400 thousand, that were supposedly funding a campaign organized by the Coalition against Bashar al-Assad's nomination for the presidential election, comparing between the coalition’s campaign with its expensive expenses, and the voluntary campaign of "blood elections" which was organized by independent activists without costing a penny.

Moreover, they also demanded to bring independent specialists to assess the impact of the coalition’s campaign, and compare that to the free campaign which caused a huge impact in and outside Syria, as they say.

And according to details obtained by Zaman Alwasl, 40 activists representing a number of media and field organizations met on 30/4/2014 in order to launch a campaign to counter the farce of presidential elections in Damascus, including activists from home and abroad, and specialists in the field of media and campaigns, who all have their revolutionary and field activities.

However, on 3/5/2014 the coalition’s political committee took a decision to support a media campaign against Bashar al-Assad, and to allocate $ 400 thousand for this project, and according to activists, the administrators of the "blood elections” communicated with the coalition to coordinate with their project in order not to waste resources in two separate campaigns, but when they met Mohammed al-Saud from the coalition, he spoke with them with tone of superiority, saying they are ignorant in terms of campaigns and that the coalition has already launched its campaign, so the cooperation between them is not possible.

According to Saud, the name chosen by the activists is not appropriate, nor will have an impact, because it is contrary to the standards put by specialists who work with the coalition on its campaign!

Surprisingly, all media networks and revolutionary and political entities, have adopted the name used by activists, and even the coalition itself used it in the final days of its campaign, although its website avoided publishing any images or Hashtags that refer to the “election of blood”, activists said.

The activists reconfirmed that the cost of the "Blood Elections" campaign reached "zero dollar”, and was completed entirely by 100% voluntary work, in which more than 200 people from four continents participated, while the coalition’s budget reached 400 thousand dollars, supposedly without the salaries of the staff in media office, because they are paid out of the budget of the campaign!

According to them, if the coalition allocated that amount to support their campaign, which was launched before the coalition’s political decision to establish its campaign, that would undoubtedly have made a huge and qualitative difference.