BEIRUT — Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in a second speech in two days, said during a Tuesday election rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs that his party “would be [a] frontliner in removing the Lebanese sectarian system if the Lebanese people approved this move.”
Here’s what we know:
• Nasrallah spoke following Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in the same rally. In his speech, speaking via a streamed video, he announced that he is in Beirut’s southern suburbs and said, “Lebanon’s sectarian nature imposes a collective approach” to its politics rather than “the ruling of the majority.”
• Addressing his supporters who attended the rally, Nasrallah said that their attendance in huge numbers is a message that they “are loyal to the resistance in spite of the American attempts to make them revolt against the party amid the economic crisis.”
• Nasrallah also said that the depositors “should not bear any losses on behalf of the banks who have lent the government and got very high profits from the interest rates in return.” Since October 2019, banks have imposed de facto capital controls on most people’s bank accounts as billions of dollars were reportedly transferred abroad.
• Hezbollah and Amal’s district list in South III district involves Marwan Kheireddine, a former minister and the current head of Al-Mawarid bank.