Around 70 former Free Patriotic Movement members are planning on announcing a new political movement after their unsuccessful attempts to stop the “inheritance of power” in the party.
Several figures, whose FPM membership has been suspended, in addition to others who have decided to quit the movement, are set to meet on Saturday to announce a document on their principles, pending the full release of their new party’s political vision during a press conference in the coming months.
The FPM crisis began in 2015 over what the disgruntled members say was pressure exerted on them to vote for Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil as President Michel Aoun’s successor in leading the movement.
Aoun is the FPM’s founder. But critics claim that when the president decided it was time for someone else to lead the movement, several candidates vying for the post were pressured to withdraw their candidacies.
The critics dubbed the election of Bassil, who is Aoun’s son-in-law, as undemocratic.
Ever since becoming the FPM leader, Bassil has worked on marginalizing his rivals - top figures who had founded the party along with Aoun - inside the movement.
Among those planning on announcing the new movement are Naim Aoun, who is the president’s nephew, FPM figures Bassam al-Hashem, Antoine Nasrallah, Antoine Mkhaiber, Ramzi Kanj, Tony Harb, Ziad Abs and Kamal al-Yazij, and retired Major Generals Antoine Abdulnoor, George Nader, Antoine Qasas and others.
Sources said that the new party will not have a single leader because the founders believe that the movement’s leadership should not be monopolized by one person.
Al-Hashem told Asharq Al-Awsat that the former FPM members don’t aim at forming an opposition against Aoun. The new movement seeks to form a democratic state that rejects the “inheritance of power.”
He lamented that the FPM leadership has turned against its principles and has consolidated the concept of political settlements and keeping posts in the family.
As for Nasrallah, he said that he hasn’t stopped meeting with FPM figures, who have either resigned or whose memberships have been suspended, in an effort to launch their new movement.
“There is an unprecedented level of desperation among the Lebanese,” he said, adding “we have a huge responsibility to confront the meltdown.”
