Lebanon’s presidential vacuum has almost completed its eighth month. The “loyalty” group, as well as the “opposition” bloc and those who joined its ranks from the “intersection” with the Aounist movement, succeeded in falsifying the real division in the country that emerged from the “October 17” revolution.
They deliberately made this division look as if the conflict was between a “sovereign” line and another “opposing” one, between the state and the non-state, and between independence and subordination.
They presented a miserable scene, through which each team suggested to its followers that salvation would be achieved with the arrival of its own candidate, whether Sleiman Franjieh or Jihad Azour!
The recent voting session was different from the past ones. Its main goal was exclusion rather than electing a president for the republic. The “opposition”, along with the Aounists, achieved what consolidated their position and share, while obstructing the appointment of a president by force...
Gebran Bassil - the popularly condemned politician, who was sanctioned internationally on charges of covering the mini-state and his role in corrupting political life – presented himself as a symbol in the battle for sovereignty and independence, so that many people, including the October uprising deputies, disregarded the reality of his political positioning, while some of them spoke of guarantees conveyed to them by the secret candidate Azour!
The two teams have both failed to offer a reading to the people about those responsible for hijacking the state, accepting the “party’s” monopoly over the decision of peace and war, and allowing the disintegration of power and institutions and the storm of collapses that struck Lebanon. They succeeded, however, in presenting a play that does not hide the reality of a programmed bankruptcy and creeping famine. They put forward, each on its part, the model for the survival of the farm state!
A “loyalty” group, led by Hezbollah, said brazenly that Franjieh met the specifications of protecting the state, its illegal weapons, and the regional project entrusted to it... The “opposition” agreed with Bassil, and claimed to be sovereign and reformist. It presented Azour as its model, a figure carrying a message of the authoritarians’ intention to legitimize corruption and pardon financial crimes...
At the same time, no party put forward a model candidate, from outside the quota system, who relates to the people and feels their pain. Such a candidate would have sent a message that there is no retreat from chasing those responsible for humiliating the Lebanese, and that no matter how long it takes, they will be prosecuted before an independent judiciary and held accountable!
Today, there is a negative equation expressed by the aborted electoral session. The real fear is that the resulting status quo will become a long-term resident, as the parties deal with the constitution as if it legislates obstruction and vacuum, under the pretext of democratic practice (...), so each party threatens to disrupt the quorum, if the wind is not behind its sails.
Breaking this equation entails the search for a third option. It is regrettable that the nine “October” deputies and other independents are not in a position to be able to impose a choice that is popularly embraced and curbs the arrogance and intransigence of the power-sharing parties. It is obvious that, within the current circumstances, all of Hezbollah’s talk about dialogue is nothing more than a waste of time. The dialogue that it wants remains limited to its candidate, which means prolonging the vacuum and deepening the crises. MP Mohammad Raad had addressed the opponents of the “party” by inviting them to a Franjieh dialogue...
Thus, the “sectarian duo” conveys a message to others that there will be no president for the republic, even if he obtained a numerical majority, and that the situation that prevailed during the Aounist era, in terms of Hezbollah holding the presidency, government, parliament and decision-making, will not change.
This rude performance exploits the vacuum as a useful means to serve its political agenda, which is tightening control over the state and proceeding with the deracination plan, by imposing an alien culture and a holistic educational and social pattern that destroys the Lebanese fabric and hastens the country’s annexation.
It is clear that Hezbollah’s dictionary does not take into account the repercussions of this policy, and the resulting accumulated losses for Lebanon and the Lebanese people. Instead, the party is reassured that this approach guarantees factional interests and gains within the monopolistic banking and militia multi-loyalty political alliance, which in turn invested in the collapse and achieved astronomical material gains!
On the basis of this negative equation, there is no chance for progress within Parliament! This also means the persistence of the national imbalance, under which the blocs coexisted for decades, and shared the “achievement” of ending the role of the legislative, oversight and electoral parliament, which put an end to the democratic game and the role of the ballot box!
Therefore, until new balances of power that restore political action are imposed, Hezbollah will continue to face the Lebanese with the fact that it has the right and the last say in selecting the president, and that parliament has no choice but to accept. Otherwise, the alternative is threats and accusations of treason, based on a balance of forces that falls within its interest, and promotes the region as an axis for its “victories”. So where is the escape?
Only once did they get anxious; when the public squares were filled with hundreds of thousands of people who turned to the rulers, saying: “We have rights and we will take them.” The “October Revolution” caused the quota system to collapse.
More than one side moved the gun from shoulder to shoulder, begging for gain, while Hezbollah resorted to tyranny and oppression, after the subjugation approach was exposed...
On May 15, 2022, the Lebanese showed that they did not give up. The punitive vote was widespread and hindered dark plans and projects, but the challenge remains the same: How can the infernal cycle be broken? Just as repression and incitement did not make people lose their compass, the disappointments of a difficult year will not thwart the attempts of those who lost everything, along with vast elites, to devise struggle tools that restore action to the true national quorum.
