Beirut: Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has reiterated his call to elect Free Patriotic Movement founder Michel Aoun for president.
The seat has been vacant since Michel Sulaiman’s term ended in May 2014. Political currents in the country related to the war in Syria has contributed to the duration of the vacancy.
On Saturday, Geagea called on all parliamentary blocs to support his nomination.
In a thinly-veiled call to Iran-backed Hezbollah he said “especially the blocs that are allied with Aoun”.
He also reiterated his call for Sa’ad Hariri to be elected as Prime Minister.
The two had a fall-out over Hariri’s proposal to elect Sulaiman Franjieh to the post of president, but Geagea later said that the LF alliance with Hariri’s Future Party remained strong.
Both Geagea and Aoun have been battling it out for the post, but in a surprise move in January the former announced his formal backing of his arch-rival.
Aoun is supported by Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian March 8 allies for the presidency, while Geagea had been the official candidate for the March 14 coalition, including both the LF and Future parties.
Observers believe Iran, through its Hezbollah proxy, wants to keep the Lebanese state weak and has no interest in electing a president.
Geagea’s surprise backing of Aoun, was viewed by many as a way to test Hezbollah’s sincerity in electing a president since his backing would ensure quorum in the parliament.
But since January, Hezbollah has been mum over its reasons to keep the seat vacant.
On Saturday, Geagea also stressed the importance of Muslim-Christian partnership.
“I want to remind everyone that just as partnership without sovereignty has no meaning, sovereignty without partnership also has no meaning and the situation that was created by the era of [Syrian] hegemony over Lebanon must come to an end.”
His comments were addressed to Foreign Minister Jibran Bassil, Aoun’s son-in-law who has been under fire recently for suppressing internal dissent against him within the FPM party.
Bassil attended an FPM dinner in the Koura (North Lebanon) on Saturday, vowing to “destroy” what he called the “corrupt structure” that ruled the country between 1990 and 2005.
“The 1990-2005 era was based on marginalising and eliminating a part of Lebanese society ... The Syrians withdrew from Lebanon and ended their hegemony, but it was replaced by the Four-Party Coalition, which extended Syria’s dominance for an additional period before eventually collapsing,” he said, focusing his ire on Sunnis—and especially assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s Future Movement.
Geagea offered a more reserved statement on parliamentary elections scheduled for the spring of 2017.
He said holding them without a new electoral law or the absence of a president would “achieve nothing.”
Geagea concluded, although without mentioning Hezbollah by name, that the party was disinterested in the rise of a real republic in Lebanon based on the equation ‘a strong republic means a weak party and weak republic means a strong party’.
