Interview by Abdullah Al Ghadawi; Translation by Yusra Ahmed
(Zaman Al Wasl)- The new president of Syrian opposition's National Coalition, Khalid Khoja, was elected away from dictation, blocs’ influence and regional considerations, to give Syrians a new hope for changes and improvement in their revolution’s situation.
In his talk to Zaman al-Wasl he mentioned his plans to establish new bases for new strategies to improve the Coalition and regain Syrians’ trust, and the international status that started to get weakened.
To achieve those goals, the Coalition’s Chief mentioned that Coalition needs to be more coherent and consensual which make it closer to the Syrian revolution’s status. “getting closer to the Syrian community and liberated areas inside Syria and refugees would become the priority of the National Coalition and it would return it on track”.
Khoja confirmed that he started working on achieving his aims to improve the Coalition’s performance, as 70% of all blocs and movements agree on the mechanisms to achieve the goal. “We started to get rid of all accumulated mistakes of previous periods in the Coalition and the Interim Government, most importantly the high number of employees within the both of them, and the overlap in responsibilities between the Coalition and the Government. Now the Coalition should be the political and legislative body, while the Government should act as executive and service authority, while the Staff Body should be under the Ministry of Defense umbrella”, Khoja said and added that work and mechanisms to implement plans are carrying on consensually, not by aggregations' and political blocs' pressure.
The new Coalition’s chief refused the idea that he had won the election because he was supported by “al-Sabbagh’s bloc”, even he refused the expression itself. He explained that the mentioned bloc started as the Local councils’ blocs which was supervised by the Syrian Business forum that headed by Mostafa Sabbagh, then that bloc started to rely on some countries and organizations to carry on its duties. “I was nominated by the Kurds, and supported by Damascus Declaration, even I was supported by the bloc that was with the other side of nomination, as I told you, nomination was consensual, and electing me contradicted the claims of existing controlling powers or submissive blocs within the Coalition”
Khalid Khoja mentioned that previous chiefs of the coalition had similar goals and there has been a significant stream within the coalition wanted to change and improve, but time and the international circumstances were obstacles to turn thought into acts, like Hadi al-Bahra, the former Chief of the Coalition, he wanted to concentrate on Syrians inside the country, but the short time he spent in Coalition’s presidency did not help him
. Khoja explained that political compromise file that started in Cairo and Moscow was the most important one he had to deal with in his first days as a president of the Coalition. He confirmed that most opposition forces find the Coalition as the representative of them according to Geneva2 "However we need to coordinate with the Interim Government and other opposition’s bodies to reach to a strategy".
The National Coalition’s leader confirmed that a had a full and integrated plan for improvement and he would discussing it with the General Secretariat, if he was supported, the Coalition would be much better.
Khoja confessed that he has three major obstacles facing his plan: cohesion of the opposition “the Coalition, Interim Government and the Free Syrian Army” needs to be consensual. The second obstacle is regaining the Coalition’s status and prestige before the Syrians and the international community. That can be achieved by opening representative offices of the coalition in many supporting countries, reactivating the media office, communicating with the West media and institutionalizing the Free Syrian army which means re-establishing the Council of thirty.
“we are keen to communicate with the liberated areas inside Syria like Homs and Aleppo, and Damascus Ghouta, we all started to act like a country , otherwise we would not be able to manage with the restricted budget compared to the regime’s and ISIS’s, if we kept acting in the old mentality”
The last obstacle according to the Coalition’s President: “initiatives and decisions' making, before we used to receive initiatives from outside, however if we managed to tackle the previous two obstacle we would be able to have our own initiatives”
In the end, Khoja mentioned that they had not had a chance to meet with the Coordination body yet, but they sent them a Cooperation Document, but they have not received any written reply yet.
The Coalition’s chief identified many different points between the Coalition's and the Coordination Body's perception to Syrian Regime's future, the most important point that Coalition demanded Assad’s stepping down and regime’s turning over to be the outcome of any negotiation, however the Coordination Body spoke about common Government that would not fulfil the revolution’s demands.
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.