The new leadership of the country said the rebel coalition leader, Ahmed al-Shara, would serve as president during a transitional period.
The rebel coalition that seized control of Syria last month appointed its leader, Ahmed al-Shara, as president of the country to preside over a transitional period, Syrian state media reported on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the coalition, Col. Hassan Abdel Ghani, also declared that the Constitution had been nullified and the legislature and army formed under the country’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, were dissolved, according to the state news agency, SANA.
The declarations amounted to the country’s first official steps toward establishing a new government after the rebel coalition led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or H.T.S., swept into the capital, Damascus, last month in a lightning offensive that toppled Mr. al-Assad. Mr. al-Shara, who led that coalition, has since been serving as the country’s de facto leader.
As president of the transitional government, Mr. al-Shara will be at the helm of a once unimaginable period of transition in Syria, which had been ruled by the iron fist of the Assad family for more than 50 years.
After nearly 14 years of civil war that left Syria severely fractured, Mr. al-Shara is trying to unite many disparate rebel factions under a single government. But it was not immediately clear whether there was a broad consensus among those groups about his appointment as president for a transitional period or how long that period would last.
The declarations on Wednesday were published during a meeting in Damascus between H.T.S. officials and leaders of some of the other rebel groups that opposed Mr. al-Assad. By making the flurry of announcements during that forum, H.T.S. leaders appeared to be trying to demonstrate that Mr. al-Shara had won the support of various rebel groups.