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The leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF), Samir Geagea, lashed out at the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, who had accused his opponents of having “closed the way” to saving Lebanon. “I did my part, I proposed a dialogue that they refused, and I have nothing left,” Berri had said to ‘Al-Joumhouria’ on Tuesday.
“No, you haven’t done your part,” said the LF leader, arguing that his initiative was an “additional waste of time.” Geagea stressed that “the one who deliberately cut short internal solutions is the one who worked to obstruct the electoral sessions, from the first session to the twelfth,” referring in particular to the ‘moumanaa’ MPs (Hezbollah, Amal, and their allies).
“Your dialogue consists of convincing the various parliamentary blocs to vote for your candidate (in this case Sleiman Frangieh),” said Geagea, who stressed that “ours is the result of intransigence and conviction of the need to move toward a common space, and not by adopting one point of view to the detriment of another (camp), nor by clinging to a candidate who received 51 votes, after having been rejected by a large proportion of the MPs.”
In response to Berri’s call for “those who don’t have a solution to come up with one,” the LF leader insisted that the solution consists of “convening an open electoral session with successive rounds until the election of a President of the Republic in accordance with the constitution.” He added: “We will have a president in the second round.”
During the twelfth electoral session on June 14, the leader of the Marada and candidate of the Hezbollah-Amal axis, Sleiman Frangieh, obtained 51 votes against 59 for the opposition candidate, former MP Jihad Azour.
