Samir Geagea

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Report: Gemayel to announce candidacy this week

BEIRUT: Kataeb Party leader Amine Gemayel will run for president and his candidacy will be announced in the next few days, a Kataeb lawmaker said Thursday, a day after Parliament was called to elect a new head of state, throwing the presidential race into high gear.

Zahle Kataeb MP Elie Marouni also voiced fears about the country descending into a presidential vacuum due to a lack of local, regional and international agreement on Lebanon’s next president.

“The Kataeb Party’s Political Bureau will announce Gemayel’s candidacy to the presidency during a meeting either Saturday or Monday,” Marouni told The Daily Star.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam said there was no reason preventing holding the presidential polls on time.

“There is no reason for this election not to be held on time if it is part of our genuine democratic practice,” Salam told reporters after meeting Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai in Bkirki to congratulate him on the Easter holiday.

He said eleventh-hour compromises and meetings between rival political parties might take place to ensure that the presidential election is successfully held on time.

He added that Rai was optimistic about the presidential vote taking place on time.

Salam dispelled fears concerning the presidential election. “We hope that this election will take place, a new president will be elected and the country’s democratic system is bolstered so that we can move forward for the sake of Lebanon and the Lebanese,” he said.

Lebanon last month entered the two-month constitutional deadline for Parliament to meet to elect a new head of state to replace President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year term expires on May 25.

Speaker Nabih Berri Wednesday called on Parliament to convene on April 23 to elect a new president. The parliamentary session will likely fail to elect a president as no candidate appears ready to secure two-thirds of the vote by MPs, and the session may not achieve quorum.

In addition to Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, who has announced he will run for president, Western Bekaa MP Robert Ghanem from the March 14 coalition has also announced his candidacy.

Although the March 14 coalition has not yet officially taken a stance on Geagea’s candidacy, his nomination is expected to present the coalition with a tough choice.

Marouni said Gemayel’s political experience, history and ability to communicate with all the parties make him “a strong president capable of running the country’s affairs.”

Marouni said Gemayel, a key leader in the March 14 coalition who served as president of Lebanon from 1982 to 1988, is able to gain support from the rival Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance because he maintains contacts with all the parties.

Gemayel’s six-year mandate as president was marred by political differences and internal strife, including clashes between the Lebanese Army and militias of Syrian-backed Muslim parties in Beirut and the mountains.

Gemayel’s tenure also saw the deployment of U.S.-led multinational troops in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization’s pullout from Lebanon.

These troops returned to Lebanon after hundreds of Palestinian refugees were massacred by Israeli-allied Lebanese militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila camps following the assassination of his brother President-elect Bachir Gemayel.

Marouni warned of a presidential vacuum unless a regional and international agreement is reached on Lebanon’s next president.

Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi from the Kataeb Party said Gemayel’s candidacy does not contradict that of Geagea.

“This is not a problem,” he told The Daily Star. “We will have diversity among candidates and we might later reach some exchange of votes or a certain agreement to have a shared candidate. This is all part of the democratic process,” he added.Although Geagea says he is confident his allies in the March 14 coalition will endorse his candidacy, the group has not yet thrown its weight behind any name.

Azzi explained that the March 14 coalition is in need of a moderate candidate that can win some votes from the rival March 8 rival camp, and that Gemayel possesses these qualities.

Geagea announced Wednesday a broad political platform stressing the state’s monopoly over the use of arms, a move intended to deprive Hezbollah of its arsenal.

Sleiman congratulated Geagea on his nomination for president, the LF said in a statement Thursday. It added that Sleiman, who spoke with Geagea by telephone Wednesday evening, also praised the LF leader for his political platform that stressed restoring the role and authority of the state as his main goal.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale met Geagea in Maarab with whom he discussed the latest political developments in Lebanon and the region, the National News Agency reported.

 

Source: The Daily Star

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Election session set for next week, white smoke unlikely

MAARAB, Lebanon: Speaker Nabih Berri called on Parliament to convene on April 23 to elect a new president as Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea announced a broad campaign platform stressing the state’s monopoly on the use of force and universal health care for all Lebanese.

The parliamentary session, set for noon Wednesday, will likely fail to elect a president as no candidate appears ready to secure two-thirds of the vote by MPs, and the session may not achieve quorum.

Geagea, meanwhile, took another concrete step in his campaign by proposing a raft of political, economic, security and judicial reforms that he said would augment the state’s power, uphold the Constitution and rule of law, and secure Lebanon.

“Lebanon today has been robbed of its will and decision, and the state is undermined and paralyzed and close to becoming a failed state,” Geagea said in a speech before dozens of party cadres at his fortress-like residence in Maarab, north of Beirut. “National responsibility requires us to stand together to break the chains of fear, anxiety and chaos and hurry to save the republic.”

Berri sent Amal MP Michel Moussa to attend Geagea’s rally, in a sign of cautious openness to his candidacy. Representatives of Future Movement leader and former premier Saad Hariri, former premier Fouad Siniora and Kataeb leader Amine Gemayel also attended, along with March 14 Secretary-General Fares Soueid.

But Geagea faces an uphill battle in gaining the support of his rivals, having been a staunch critic of Hezbollah and its intervention in Syria.

The March 14 leader has also not been endorsed by his own bloc, which has yet to throw its weight behind any candidate for the presidency.

Presidential nominees are also only likely to win the race on the back of a regional consensus agreement involving Saudi Arabia and Iran, political sources told The Daily Star. No signs of an imminent breakthrough on the issue have emerged.

Future MP Ahmad Fatfat, who attended the speech on behalf of Hariri, told The Daily Star that the bloc was in “intense discussions” but had not yet made a decision on which candidate to nominate. Hariri’s chief of staff, Nader Hariri, met early Wednesday with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

But Fatfat said March 14 would only nominate one candidate and would do so before the first Parliament session to elect a president, suggesting the decision could come as early as next week.

MP Strida Geagea told The Daily Star she was confident the alliance would back her husband in the race. “There should be a unified decision in the coming days but the atmosphere is positive toward nomination,” she said.

She said Geagea would meet with senior officials in all political blocs in Lebanon “without exception,” kicking off the tour Wednesday by meeting President Michel Sleiman and Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai and delivering a copy of his presidential campaign platform.

Sleiman and Rai will meet during the Easter holidays to discuss the election, likely stressing the need to hold it on time. They are also likely to discuss the presidency in upcoming meetings in the Vatican on the sidelines of a ceremony canonizing Pope John Paul II.

Sleiman’s six-year term ends in May. A two-month consultation period to elect a new president began last month.

Geagea has sought to portray his campaign, which carried the slogan “the strong republic,” as a triumph of state power, rule of law and the “primacy of the Constitution.”

“There will be no leniency in the principle of the state’s monopoly over weapons,” he told attendees, as he began outlining a sweeping set of campaign promises.

Geagea vowed to reform the judiciary by fighting corruption and patronage and appointing a large corps of judges to speed up trials, in addition to improving prison conditions. He said he would work to abolish the death penalty, bringing Lebanon in line with human rights conventions.

He called for reforms in the nation’s security services, criticizing them for failing to apprehend the culprits in attacks targeting members of the March 14 coalition and declaring his support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

The STL is tasked with investigating the Feb. 14, 2005, attack that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others.

Geagea pledged to improve the state’s infrastructure and to promote ecological and religious tourism to help combat rising unemployment and spiraling public debt. He also promised to transparently manage Lebanon’s offshore oil wealth and set up free trade zones including in the Bekaa Valley and the coastal regions.

Geagea also vowed to introduce mandatory universal health care for Lebanese citizens, subsidized by the state for the poor.

Geagea said he would uphold international resolutions, including 1701 which ended the 2006 war, and 1559, which called for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon, a measure aimed at Hezbollah.

He also vowed to resolve the dispute over the Shebaa Farms in south Lebanon by negotiating an agreement with the “legitimate” Syrian government, declaring Lebanon’s sovereignty over the territory.

Hezbollah argues that the Shebaa Farms area must be liberated. Israel maintains that the land belongs to Syria and will only be given up as part of a comprehensive peace agreement with the regime there.

Ministerial sources told The Daily Star foreign diplomats in Lebanon had expressed their optimism that the presidential polls would be held on time and said they were no longer worried over the possibility of a vacuum in the state’s leadership because of the presence of the unity government led by Prime Minister Tammam Salam. – Additional reporting by Antoine Ghattas Saab

Source: The Daily Star

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Reports: Gemayel, Saniora agree on March 14 coordination to choose single presidential candidate

Kataeb leader Amin Gemayel and the head of al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc Fouad Saniora agreed on the importance of coordination between the March 14 alliance’s members before backing any presidential candidate, sources said Tuesday.

Saniora visited Gemayel on Monday after talks with al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri in Riyadh.

MTV reported on Tuesday that Hariri had telephoned the Kataeb chief on to discuss the latest developments.

A terse statement issued by the Kataeb chief’s press office on Monday said discussions with Saniora focused on the presidential elections and the need to hold them on time.

But sources told several local dailies that Gemayel and Saniora stressed the unity of March 14, the importance of coordination to have a single candidate, and coming up with a mechanism to choose the person who is most capable to garner the support of MPs from outside the alliance, mainly centrists.

The vote of lawmakers from the coalition is not enough to guarantee the election of a March 14 figure, they said.

After his talks with Gemayel, Saniora met with the March 14 camp’s independent figures and briefed them on the results of his discussions with Hariri in Riyadh.

The adviser of the Mustaqbal movement chief, Nader Hariri, who was in Riyadh with Saniora, met with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, a centrist, at his residence in Clemenceau.

Also Monday, Gemayel held talks with President Michel Suleiman’s adviser, former Minister Khalil Hrawi.

Sources said that Gemayel was coming under pressure by party members and his allies in March 14 to officially announce his candidacy for the presidency.

Suleiman’s six-year term ends in May but the Constitutional deadline for the election of a new head of state started on March 25.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea was the first to announce he was running for the presidency, leaving his March 14 allies in confusion.

Other presidential hopefuls are Gemayel, MPs Butros Harb and Robert Ghanem, who are like Geagea members of March 14.

Potential candidates from the March 8 alliance are Hizbullah allies Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun and Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh.

Lebanese presidents are always chosen from the Maronite sect in accordance with the 1943 National Pact.

 

Source: Naharnet

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Geagea confident of March 14 support for candidacy

BEIRUT: Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea expressed confidence he will win the support of the March 14 coalition, which has yet to officially back his candidacy for president.

“I would not have run in the elections if I was not certain of the March 14 alliance’s support for me,” Geagea said in an interview to Saudi daily al-Watan to be published Monday.

“The March 14 alliance is very close to making the decision to endorse my candidacy,” he said. “We have our own political agenda and we must seek to implement it by all available means.”

The LF announced earlier this month the party’s nomination of Geagea for the presidency. However, the March 14 alliance, in which the LF is a main force, has yet to comment on his candidacy.

Geagea told the daily that “traditional remedies” are no longer an option for solving the Lebanese crisis, and that is what led him to run for president.

“Lebanon has become an open ground for chaos, which leaves it vulnerable to further deterioration,” he said.

“Strong individuals should assume official posts in order to strengthen the state and Lebanon should have a strong president who is capable of implementing a strong political program,” Geagea said.

Source: The Daily Star

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Rai: President with majority vote will have my backing

BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai Friday denied media reports that he supported an independent presidential candidate over one picked by the March 8 or March 14 groups, saying he supported any properly elected president.

“Any president – whether from March 8, March 14 or from outside these groups – who is elected by the absolute majority in Parliament is our president,” Rai told reporters at Rafik Hariri International Airport after returning from Geneva.

The head of the Maronite Church clarified the remarks he made to foreign media outlets while in Geneva.

“We said what everybody says, which is that if no agreement [among rival groups] is reached over one candidate from the March 14 or March 8 coalitions … then it will be possible that no one from either the March 14 or March 8 coalitions would assume the presidency,” Rai said, adding that he neither backed nor excluded any particular candidate.

However, sources at the Patriarchate told The Daily Star that Rai had information that local and regional signs indicated that a consensus president unaffiliated with either coalition stood the best chance.

The sources said that a consensus president would prioritize national interest and would believe in a moderate political stance.

Meanwhile, Future Movement MP Ahmad Fatfat told the National News Agency that a meeting between former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri in Riyadh Friday primarily focused on the presidential election.

Former Minister Jean Obeid, a possible presidential candidate, explained Friday why he had not announced his candidacy.

“He considers that rules and customs do not require the announcement of candidacy or a platform for presidential elections,” said a statement issued from Obeid’s office.

“Without false pretenses, he considers himself not to be a candidate so far due to the lack of high chances [for his victory] amid the current circumstances surrounding the competition,” the statement added.

A moderate figure, Obeid maintains good ties with Speaker Nabih Berri, Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt and other politicians from the rival March 8 and March 14 coalitions. Many view him as a possible consensus candidate for presidential elections.

The constitutional period for the election of the new president began on March 25, two months ahead of the expiry of President Michel Sleiman’s term.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, who announced his candidacy last month, said that Lebanon’s salvation lay in having a strong republic that required a strong president with clear stances.

Addressing visitors at his Maarab residence, Geagea said a strong president should be honest, stick to his position, support the state alone and not back down in fear of Hezbollah.

“The strong president is the one who says frankly what he wants and who launches his campaigns in front of the people and not in embassies and behind closed doors, … who has never sought a post or gains but only wants to be a strong president in a strong republic,” Geagea added.

Telecommunications Minister Butros Harb, also a potential candidate, said on Twitter that he would not announce his candidacy officially, as the Constitution did not require hopefuls to declare their intention to run in the presidential poll.

Western Bekaa MP Robert Ghanem announced his candidacy.

In an interview by a local television station Thursday evening, Ghanem said he believed in March 8’s values of resistance, but was also dedicated to the values of independence and sovereignty that were emphasized following the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Frederic Hof, a former adviser of the U.S. secretary of state, told a radio station that a dangerous vacuum in the presidency was possible, given the domestic repercussions of Syria’s war resulting from Hezbollah’s military involvement.

 

Source: The Daily Star

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 Lebanese Politics, Middle East, News

Conciliatory Geagea enters race for president

MAARAB, Lebanon: The Lebanese Forces nominated its leader Samir Geagea to run for the presidency Friday, in the opening salvo of what is set to be a contentious race.

The announcement came after a one-hour extraordinary meeting of the LF’s leadership in Geagea’s leafy mountain fortress-like residence at Maarab, north of Beirut.

“The executive committee of the Lebanese Forces decided unanimously to nominate the party’s leader Samir Geagea for the Lebanese presidential elections,” LF MP George Adwan announced at a news conference after the meeting.

Geagea, whose followers refer to him as “Al-Hakim,” a word that means both ‘the doctor’ and ‘the wise one,’ is the first political heavyweight to announce his candidacy.

In a speech before the vote, Geagea said that Lebanon was at a crossroads after the “continuous deterioration” of its security and economy.

“Lebanon’s image abroad was hit and confidence in it has been shaken,” Geagea said, addressing dozens of party cadres, MPs and officials.

“Lebanon’s borders are no longer clear due to its widespread penetration by armed groups coming and going to fight in Syria,” he added. “The state’s sovereignty has been widely violated by illegitimate arms in the interior.”

Lebanon has witnessed a spate of security incidents, clashes and attacks linked to the Syrian war. Radical groups that have claimed responsibility for the attacks targeting areas associated with Hezbollah often cite the party’s intervention in Syria as the grounds for their operations.

The LF sought to portray Geagea’s candidacy as a radical step needed to “shock” the country toward recovery. The party also said that Lebanon needed a strong president with a clear position on the key issues facing the country, rather than a bland consensus choice selected by foreign patrons.

Adwan said that previous presidents were often chosen by foreign leaders, were not independent, or lacked “color, smell and opinion.”

“The nomination of Dr. Geagea is to break this model and to say that the time has come for the Lebanese to choose a president made in Lebanon who has clear opinions,” he said.

Geagea’s persistent and vocal criticism of Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria raises questions about his ability to garner enough support from across the aisle to propel him to the presidency.

His announcement also pre-empted the March 14 political bloc’s deliberations on who to back in the presidential race.

President Michel Sleiman’s six-year term ends on May 25. The two-month constitutional period in which Parliament must convene and elect a new president started last month.

Geagea, 62, is a staunch critic of Hezbollah, Iran and the Syrian regime, and is also a key pillar of the Western-backed March 14 coalition.

He hails from the north Lebanon village of Bsharri, and became the head of the Lebanese Forces in 1986, when the group was a militia. He was arrested in 1994 over his suspected involvement in a bomb attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Church the same year.

He was also sentenced to life imprisonment over his alleged involvement in the assassination of Prime Minister Rashid Karami in June 1987 and was not released until July 2005, when Parliament passed an amnesty law.

Karami’s nephew, former minister Faisal Karami, called Geagea’s nomination a “black day” for Lebanon that showed what he described as the country’s “moral decline.”

LF MP Fadi Karam hit back at Karami, claiming he sought to relive the “black days” of Lebanon’s history and condemning his support for the Syrian regime.

Geagea refused to share power with Hezbollah in February in Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s “national interest government” due to the party’s involvement in Syria.

But in a sign of a softer tone toward his rivals, Geagea refrained from naming Hezbollah in his opening speech, and described as a “positive step” the statement by his potential rival, Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, who said he would not run if Geagea was nominated for the presidency.

He also praised Hezbollah Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Fneish after a statement by the latter saying it was Geagea’s right to run for presidency.

“When Hezbollah takes the decision to abide by the Constitution and the laws and build the state, the LF and its leader will meet with them and join hands to build the state,” Adwan told reporters.

But responding to skepticism from reporters who questioned whether Geagea coordinated his announcement with the rest of the March 14 bloc, the LF expressed confidence that their allies would back Geagea.

Adwan said that March 14 leaders had long been aware of Geagea’s candidacy and that he had unrelentingly championed the alliance’s principles.

“It is natural that he would be nominated on behalf of March 14,” Adwan said.

In the first reaction by a March 14 official, Deputy Speaker Farid Makari hailed the nomination of Geagea, describing his chances of winning the support of the rest of the March 14 coalition as “very high.” Speaking from Parliament, he said: “Geagea is certainly a key figure in March 14 and he has all our respect and love.”

But in an indication that Geagea will face additional hurdles before securing the bloc’s nomination, Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb hinted in a TV interview that he may also run for the post.

In an appearance on LBC, Harb said that if he were to run for presidency it would be on a platform of “rebuilding Lebanon,” but insisted that the March 14 alliance should only nominate one candidate.

Earlier in the day, Future MP Ahmad Fatfat also said the bloc had not yet decided on its nominee.

Salam called for a “made in Lebanon” president, saying in an interview that his government would work to create the “right atmosphere” for the presidential election to be held.

“I hope the next president will be purely Lebanese-made as was the national interest Cabinet,” Salam said in an interview with General Security magazine that is set to be published Saturday.

“All regional and international forces that affect Lebanese affairs support electing a new president,” he said, adding that the election would create political stability.

“We are looking forward to this constitutional deadline and we do not want any vacuum in the presidency,” he said.

Source: The Daily Star

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