BEIRUT: Hezbollah holds the key to the presidential election if it is really serious about supporting MP Michel Aoun’s candidacy, Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea said Wednesday. Geagea said the moment of the truth has come for the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition to translate their declared support for Aoun’s presidential bid into action.
He also strongly denied that his endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy for the presidency was in response to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s support for MP Sleiman Frangieh’s bid.
“The presidential election now depends on Hezbollah’s seriousness about electing a president. If the party is serious about electing a president, Gen. Aoun can be elected president tomorrow,” Geagea said in a wide-ranging interview with MTV channel Wednesday night.
Noting that Aoun is the March 8 coalition’s declared presidential candidate, he said: “Hezbollah has been saying that it is supporting Gen. Aoun to the end. We have now reached the end and it [Hezbollah] must prove this.”
The LF chief sounded optimistic about Aoun’s election as president, saying the founder of the Free Patriotic Movement can garner enough votes in Parliament for his election if the March 8 parties vote for him.
He said if the LF’s eight MPs and at least four independent lawmakers are added to the March 8 bloc’s 57 MPs, Aoun would be elected with a majority of 69 votes, more than half of Parliament’s 128 members.
Geagea strongly rejected attempts to link the presidential vote to any package deal, including a new electoral law. He also denied that Hariri or MP Walid Jumblatt has put a veto on Aoun’s election, saying that all the parties wanted a new head of state to be elected.
Geagea’s remarks came two days after he announced his endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy for the presidency during a joint news conference at the LF leader’s residence in Maarab in a surprise landmark development that jolted the entire political landscape.
Hariri and Hezbollah have not yet commented on Geagea’s endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy, while Berri said the LF chief’s move was not sufficient to break the 20-month-old presidential deadlock.
Geagea’s support for Aoun’s candidacy is essentially aimed at undermining the Marada Movement leader’s presidential chances, especially after the LF leader called on his allies in the March 14 coalition, led by the Future Movement, to rally behind Aoun’s bid.
But Geagea vehemently denied that his endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy was in response to Hariri’s support for Frangieh ’s bid.
“The nomination of Aoun was not a childish reaction or response to Hariri’s support for Hariri’s candidacy,” he said. “Given a choice between Aoun and Frangieh, we will choose Aoun. We have chosen Aoun for the presidency because Frangieh is a genuine March 8, while the general [Aoun] is a fake March 8.”
Geagea admitted that he was not pleased with Hariri’s decision to back Frangieh for the presidency.
Geagea’s decision to back Aoun comes as Hariri’s initiative supporting Frangieh’s presidential bid has been bogged down after drawing strong opposition from the three main Christian parties: the FPM, the LF and the Kataeb Party.
Geagea said the LF’s MPs would attend a Parliament session on Feb. 8 to elect a president regardless of the parliamentary blocs’ positions.
He emphatically denied that his endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy was a walkout from the March 14 coalition, stressing that the LF would remain within the group. “We were in the March 14 [coalition] and we will stay in it. The March 14, which is a political project, has not ended. The March 14 project still exists,” Geagea said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil Wednesday met with more party leaders as part of a political drive aimed at promoting Aoun’s presidential candidacy.
Bassil, also the FPM leader, said his party was seeking to get Christian and other Lebanese factions united behind Aoun’s presidential candidacy.
“Our goal is to restore balance in the country and restore Christian unity that will lay the ground for national unity and facilitate it,” Bassil told reporters after a meeting with Kataeb Party leader MP Sami Gemayel at the party’s headquarters in Saifi in Beirut. “We are very much concerned to hammer out an agreement based on clear political foundations that will allow us to fully play our role and lay the ground for genuine national partnership in a manner that will not exclude anyone,” he said.
Gemayel, whose party has not yet taken a stance on Aoun’s and Frangieh’s candidacies, said the Kataeb would meet to study the issue and declare its position.
Later, Bassil, accompanied by Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, met with MP Talal Arslan, the head of the Lebanese Democratic Party, at the latter’s residence in Khalde, south of Beirut, for the same purpose of seeking Arslan’s backing for Aoun’s candidacy. He stressed that the FPM was keen on maintaining its ties with its March 8 allies.
“Gen. Aoun’s political position is primarily based on the unity of Lebanon and the Lebanese and defining the real enemies, which are Israel and terrorism that is spreading in the world,” Bassil said. He added that any bets on a split within the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition because of Geagea’s endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy were doomed to fail.
Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb said that if the choice for president was between Frangieh and Aoun, he would pick the former.
“We are dealing with that happened with open arms, and we must go to Parliament to elect a president. We will not accept to blackmail the Lebanese people with the presidency issue,” Harb said after meeting with Gemayel in a reference Geagea’s endorsement of Aoun’s candidacy.
“I have said before the latest development that if the choice is confined to these two men, I will choose Sleiman Frangieh,” Harb said