The Prime Minister of Syria Riyad Hijab has left government to join the side of the revolutionaries. Of course the regime itself is claiming that Mr Hijab was sacked, whereas he and the western media are saying that he defected. Given the constant stream of high profile defections recently the clever money is on defection, and this certainly represents a triumph for the revolutionaries as the PM is the biggest name so far to take flight from his post ans switch sides.
Mr Riyad Hijab described the government of Syria as a ‘terrorist regime’ and announced that he had ‘joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution’. The former Prime Minister’s spokesman claimed on a live Al Jazeera television news broadcast that this defection has been planned for ‘more than two-months‘ – leading me to wonder whether he has been working against the regime whilst in his post (and if so whether he should maybe have stayed in order to provide real help to the revolution rather than just moral support from a safe distance), or whether he has just been dithering for the last two months.
