A call by former Minister Gebran Bassil to hold a national dialogue to agree on a new political system raised questions regarding its timing and real purpose.
Bassil, President Michel Aoun’s son-in-law and the head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), said that the Lebanese needed a new pact, “which would be based on our choices, not imposed on us by developments.”
In a news conference on Sunday, he said the solution was the creation of a “civil state with vast decentralization.”
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was the first to put forward the idea of a founding conference in 2012, when he called for “holding a national founding conference to discuss building a strong state in Lebanon.”
Nasrallah’s call at the time was not answered, as most of the political forces refused to discuss changing the regime before deciding on the fate of Hezbollah’s weapons.
While official sources in Hezbollah preferred not to comment on Bassil’s invitation, sources in Amal Movement emphasized that the latter was not against any dialogue to develop the Lebanese system, “although we are convinced that any change to this system, which does not stem from a national consensus, will not lead to positive results.”
For his part, Member of the Future Movement MP Mohammad al-Hajjar said he was not surprised by Bassil’s call for a system change, as “(the FPM) has never believed in the Taif Agreement.”
“Bassil’s invitation leads us to chaos and into the unknown because no one knows where things might take us if we open the discussion on a fateful topic in this difficult situation the country is going through,” he remarked.
The Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), for its part, does not seem enthusiastic about reconsidering the political system in the current circumstance, as expressed by MP Bilal Abdallah.
“Is this the right time to reformulate the system in Lebanon amid disease and starvation, the crisis of deposits, the dollar exchange rate, unemployment, and emigration?” He asked.
Sources in the Lebanese Forces party stressed that the main reason for the current crisis lied in the failure to implement the Constitution since 1990, whether with regards to the Syrian presence or to Hezbollah’s arms.
The solution is to fully implement the Taif agreement by calling on Hezbollah to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese State, the LF sources underlined.
