BEIRUT: A much-anticipated national dialogue to break the 15-month presidential stalemate and get Parliament and the government functioning appeared to be in trouble Sunday with Hezbollah upholding its support for MP Michel Aoun’s presidential bid, and Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea dismissing the talks as “a waste of time.” Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiative for all-inclusive talks is already facing a tough challenge from civil society groups who have called for a massive demonstration in Downtown Beirut for Wednesday, the day when the first round of dialogue kicks off in Parliament, to protest the rival leaders’ rare meeting.
The “You Stink” movement, which has been spearheading anti-government street protests over rampant corruption and the failure to resolve a mounting garbage crisis, has called for a sit-in during the morning and a massive demonstration in the evening Wednesday near Nejmeh Square, where the Parliament building is located.
Other civil groups as well as the Union Coordination Committee, the umbrella movement of civil servants and public and private schoolteachers, have said they would join Wednesday’s rally.
Berri said Sunday if another side other than the LF announced their boycott of the dialogue, he would postpone it.
He said the presidential election issue would be the first item for discussion during the dialogue session. “If we don’t agree on it, we will move to another item,” Berri was quoted as saying by visitors at his Ain al-Tineh residence. “Who knows, we might agree on an electoral law and achieve a breakthrough through it.” He added that an agreement on an electoral law would lead to holding parliamentary elections and later the election of a president.
Asked to comment on Wednesday’s planned demonstration that would besiege the dialogue participants, the speaker said: “I don’t consider myself to be besieged. I am ready to join the demonstrators and be in the front. What they are proposing is rightful.” Berri, according to visitors, classified the protesters in two different categories. “Among those demonstrators is a group of honorable people who raise rightful demands,” he said. “There is another group who maintains a public relationship with the Americans and whose names are known.”
Berri said he raised this issue with the U.S. Ambassador David Hale who did not deny the relationship of these protesters with the U.S. Embassy.
The speaker said Hale assured him that there was no U.S. decision to push those youth to stage street protests, noting that he [Hale] supported demonstrations on the basis of freedom of opinion and speech.
Days before the dialogue, security has been beefed up around the Parliament building, especially at entrances leading to Nejmeh Square, in a bid to prevent a confrontation between the protesters and politicians attending the talks.
Geagea said the LF would not attend the dialogue, describing it as “a waste of time” like previous dialogue sessions on the withdrawal of Palestinian arms from outside Palestinian camps and a new electoral law.
“Everything indicates that the [planned] dialogue will be like previous ones, a waste of time,” Geagea said in a speech during a mass ceremony honoring the LF’s martyrs at his residence in Maarab Saturday. “What is needed now is one thing: to head to Parliament and elect a president,” he said. “Going for dialogue now shifts the attention from the main decisive step, the only one that can … save us from the current crisis: electing a president.”
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Fneish, one of two ministers representing Hezbollah in the Cabinet, reiterated the party’s vehement support for Aoun’s candidacy for the presidency.
“As we have supported the protesters’ demands to find the appropriate solution to the people’s problems, we also back the Free Patriotic Movement’s right to gain the representation that is commensurate with its popular size,” Fneish told a memorial ceremony in south Lebanon. “Hence comes our support for Aoun’s candidacy for the presidential election and our support for his demand to be a real partner in the government.”
The Future Movement and its March 14 allies have staunchly rejected Aoun for president and called for an agreement on a consensus candidate.
Separately, U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi King Salman have called for the election of a new president in Lebanon.
In a statement issued by the White House and released by the U.S. Embassy in Beirut Saturday at the end of their meeting in the White House in Washington Friday, “the two leaders underlined the utmost importance for Parliament to elect a new president according to constitutional rules enforced in Lebanon,” the National News Agency reported.
Obama and Salman also stressed their support for “Lebanon’s sovereignty, security and stability.”
The two leaders expressed their “full support for the Lebanese armed forces in securing the safety of [Lebanon’s] territorial border and in resisting the threat of extremism,” according to the NNA report.
Prime Minister Tammam Salam praised Berri’s national dialogue initiative, saying it is an attempt to find political solutions to the protracted crisis. However, he warned of attempts by some groups to exploit the street protests to spread chaos in the country.
“The dialogue initiative is a thankful attempt to contain the conflict and find political solutions to the crisis,” Salam said during a meeting with a delegation of religious figures and notables from the northern district of Akkar.
He said the protests are a legitimate way to express the people’s anger over the deterioration of their living conditions. But he warned that there are “those who are trying to exploit this popular rage to spread chaos in the country.”
“Chaos isn’t the solution and adopting extremism complicates problems and doesn’t resolve them,” Salam said.