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Lebanese Forces (LF) leader, Samir Geagea, has asserted that the only way out of the crisis is to elect a President.
In an interview on local TV station LBCI on Wednesday, July 12, evening, the FL leader mentioned the dialogue tables in 2006, 2008 and 2011, stating that he didn’t want “to waste any more time.” He said that he had taken the 2006 dialogue very seriously, but it turned out that all these dialogue tables were useless and ended in assassinations. Hezbollah has never been able to talk to anyone, neither in the South, between 1980 and 1990 with the resistance, nor with Amal. “The only person Hezbollah was able to talk to was Rafic Hariri, and we all know how that ended,” he pointed out.
According to Geagea, Hezbollah has a dogma and an ideology from which it does not want to deviate. However, he does not completely rule out finding meeting points with the Shiite formation, as long as this happens within the framework of State institutions and without any form of submission. According to him, the pro-Iranian movement does not genuinely want dialogue, but a way to block the constitutional bodies.
He also criticized at length the attitude of Hezbollah and its allies, who left every parliamentary election session at the end of the first round. “If they had stayed, we would have had a president by now.” Geagea asserted that Jihad Azour could have been elected in the second or third round and that ten MPs would have voted for the opposition candidate if there had been more than one round of voting and if the Moumanaa MPs had not left the session prematurely.
According to the FL leader, there is a constitutional process that must be followed. “We cannot turn Lebanon into Afghanistan; This is not a country of tribes. Our only demand is that we have successive electoral sessions until a president is elected,” he said.
Regarding Hezbollah’s calls for dialogue, Geagea assured that the entire opposition camp is against this initiative, including the Change MPs, because “the dialogue proposed by Hezbollah is not a real dialogue, but an obstruction to the presidential election.” He assured that he would not take part in the dialogue, not even at the request of the French envoy for Lebanon, Jean-Yves Le Drian, nor at that of any foreign country.
Regarding other candidates, Geagea said he was not opposed to the candidacy of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Joseph Aoun, pointing that Azour was the LF and the opposition’s candidate.
Commenting on recent events in South Lebanon, the FL chief referred to the creation of the Blue Line in 2000, indicating that the situation in Ghajar has been virtually unchanged ever since, and questioning why things are moving now. He described the situation as “staged.”
In response to a question about an alleged desire of the Lebanese Forces to resort to the federal system, Geagea argued that broad decentralization is not a federation and that his party would not take a position on this matter without the agreement of all parties. “What the LF are looking for is a new way to run the country, but still under the umbrella of the Taif Agreement,” he explained.
He also said that he was not worried about the decreasing number of Christians in Lebanon, since the Taif Agreement guarantees parity between Christians and Muslims, regardless of numbers.
Concerning the Kornet el-Sawda case, Geagea hailed the reactions of Becharre MPs and their call on their supporters to remain calm. “The investigation is over, and we are waiting for the indictment. The army must remain deployed in the area until the land registry judge determines the demarcation of the land.”
Geagea stressed his preference for Wassim Mansour (the first deputy governor of the Central Bank) to take over the reins of the Banque du Liban (BDL) once Riad Salameh’s mandate comes to an end, on July 31. He also denied rumors according to which the United States was pressuring the LF into choosing former minister Camille Abou Sleiman as the next governor of the BDL.
