With two announced candidates for the presidency of the Republic, each having significant parliamentary support, Lebanon could turn the page on the presidential stalemate on June 14, during the parliamentary electoral session. For this to happen, the MPs who have not yet made up their minds should not leave the ballots blank, nor should they vote for personalities who have no chance of being elected.
During a dinner organized by the Lebanese Forces in the Bekaa on Saturday evening, the leader of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea stressed upon this particular subject: “The date of June 14 is crucial. Anyone who puts a blank ballot paper in the box, the name of a personality other than the announced candidates (Jihad Azour and Sleiman Frangieh), or slogans, will be contributing, with the Moumanaa camp (Amal-Hezbollah-Syria-Iran), to keeping the presidential elections deadlocked.”
Mr. Geagea adressed the independent MPs and those representing the October 17 (2019) protest, criticizing them for “making various excuses to avoid having to assume their responsibilities.” He added: “Once an agreement on Jihad Azour’s candidacy was secured, some put forward bizarre arguments, including the rejection of community alignments. But all elections in Lebanon follow such alignments. (…) Every MP represents a community, whether he likes it or not.” He warned that voting for personalities who can merely gather few votes “will only hinder the election of a president.”
Mr. Geagea addressed the audience of the October 17 protest, asking them to put pressure on their MPs to “prevent them from contributing to the blockage with the Moumanaa.”
An existential crisis
The FL leader insisted that “the current crisis in Lebanon is far from being simple,” stating that “it is the expression of a deeper crisis, an existential crisis. We don’t know for how much longer we can keep on living within a (political) formula that has proved to be a failure. We need maybe to bring forward a new one that is likely to preserve Lebanon and its people.” Geagea was referring to broader administrative and financial decentralization, which has been mooted for some time.
Mr. Geagea downplayed the importance of Amal and Hezbollah’s repeated call for dialogue which would lead to an agreement on a candidate for the presidential election: “They do so because they only want (Marada leader) Sleiman Frangieh as head of state, which we won’t accept.”
“We adopted a positive attitude right up to the end, in order to put an end to the political deadlock, and we succeeded in creating a coalition with the opposition forces and the Free Patriotic Movement, in favor of the candidacy of former Minister Jihad Azour. But when the Christians and the opposition in general agreed on a candidate, the same old story resurfaced. The Speaker of the House called indeed a parliamentary session, but practically, we don’t know what will happen,” he explained, stressing that he expects “nothing good from the Moumanaa camp which has plunged the country into this crisis.” He said: “How can we expect otherwise, when all that matters to this camp is the implementation of its project, which is not in the country’s interest?,” alluding to the Iran-Syria axis’ stranglehold on Lebanon.
