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The official support of the opposition, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), and a group of opposition and change MPs for the candidacy of former Finance Minister Jihad Azour for the presidency of the Republic bothers Hezbollah and embarrasses Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Especially since, in parallel with the announcement of Azour’s candidacy by the new parliamentary coalition, Bkirki is in favor of this choice and has launched a battery of contacts to help unblock the presidential election.
On Saturday, Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Rai sent the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Boulos Abdel-Sater, to meet Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Abdel-Sater is also due to meet with Berri.
However, the latter remained very vague about his intentions over the weekend, refusing to say whether or not he planned to call for a parliamentary electoral session now that two major components of Parliament each have their own candidate. The Amal-Hezbollah duo, it is recalled, supports the candidacy of Marada leader Sleiman Frangieh for the presidency. “Let the opposition announce its support for Jihad Azour’s candidacy and take a clear stance on the matter. When this is done, we will act accordingly,” Berri declared in an interview with the Al-Intishar website.
However, according to parliamentary sources close to the Shiite duo, the official support of the opposition, the FPM, and independent MPs for Jihad Azour’s candidacy “is not enough, since other parties have not yet announced their support.” According to these sources, Azour still has to officially announce his candidacy before Berri convenes the Parliament. However, the Constitution makes no provision for either of these scenarios, which simply serve as a pretext for maintaining the deadlock.
As for Hezbollah, whose deputies and executives have been busy denigrating Jihad Azour ever since an opposition-FPM agreement on his candidacy began to take shape, it raised its voice again on Sunday, repeating the same refrain: Jihad Azour is a defiant candidate “who will not accede to the presidency.” The Shiite party’s outcry against the former Finance Minister reveals above all that it has remained insensitive to Bkirki’s arguments on the urgent need to elect a president to lead a country and a state that are sinking.
In a press release issued on Sunday, Bkirki announced that it had dispatched Abdel-Sater to Nasrallah “as part of the consultations and contacts initiated with the various Lebanese parties, to facilitate the holding of the presidential elections and put an end to the deadly vacuum in the top magistracy.”
While the coalition (opposition-FPM-independents) finds in Azour the ideal candidate to lead the process that should enable Lebanon to get back on its feet, especially as his profile corresponds to that of a technocrat that the country needs in these circumstances, the Amal-Hezbollah duo has other calculations. What it wants, and what it is striving to achieve, is to draw its political adversaries into a dialogue that would lead to a consensus around a person “who would not offend anyone.”
In other words, a flexible personality who, above all, would not upset the habits of a duo accustomed to pulling the strings in a country left adrift. Does this mean it is prepared to give up its support for Frangieh? “Hezbollah knows very well that the opposition and the FPM will never vote for the leader of the Marada. It wants to maneuver by betting on the time factor, to try to lead them towards a consensus around another candidate more or less close to its axis,” a source close to the opposition said.
Berri and Hezbollah had rejected the candidacy of the main opposition candidate, MP Michel Moawad, whom they considered a defiant candidate, arguing in favor of a consensual candidate.
“Don’t tire yourself out”
This was the same line repeated by two of their prominent figures on Sunday, to mark their formation’s opposition to Jihad Azour’s choice. “We remain concerned about holding a dialogue and an agreement to break the deadlock in the presidential election. But the group that wants to bring in a defiant president continues to ignore reality, internal balances, and the composition of Parliament, and thinks it can lure the Lebanese,” MP Hassan Fadlallah said during a meeting in the village of Haris, in southern Lebanon.
He accused the opposition of wanting to “repeat its original game with a candidate it failed to get elected, but with a personality around whom it has rallied deputies who have their own calculations,” alluding to the FPM. He also accused it of “seeking to gain time to the detriment of the interests of the country and its institutions, notably the presidency.”
According to him, Parliament “must elect a head of state who represents all Lebanese and not one group whose policy is based on the control and elimination” of the other. At the same time, Fadlallah tried to promote Frangieh’s candidacy, criticizing the parliamentary coalition for “rejecting a president capable of dialogue with all internal and external parties, in favor of a defiant candidate.”
“They think they can get him elected head of state, but we say to them: don’t tire yourselves out, and don’t waste your time. No defiant president will gain access to Baabda, whoever he may be,” he warned.
Echoing him, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, a member of Hezbollah’s Central Council, said in a speech in Aïn Bousouar, southern Lebanon, that “the distribution of votes in Parliament calls for dialogue and agreement to resolve the crisis” of the presidential election. “As for lame agreements, they will remain futile,” he said, referring to the agreement between the opposition and the FPM.
