Bassil: Dialogue with Hezbollah about decentralization, state asset fund

BEIRUT — The head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Gebran Bassil, said Saturday night that his dialogue with Hezbollah is "only about decentralization, a state asset fund and the project of building a state."

The FPM has been demanding decentralization and a state asset fund for weeks, with Bassil using his negotiations with Hezbollah around the election of a new president to advance this agenda. After tensions in the past year, notably in relation to Hezbollah's decision to support Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh for the presidency — a candidacy Bassil opposes — the two parties have renewed contact.

In their discussions, Bassil's FPM is using its two demands as bargaining chips for its potential support of Frangieh's candidacy.

In an FPM issued transcript of a speech delivered in the Bekaa, Bassil said that his dialogue with Hezbollah about these points was designed to "elect a president who is compatible with this project of building a state because we will not accept a president that does not represent the idea of the state."

"We hope this dialogue expands so that it includes all factions," Bassil's continued.

'Not the only solution'

"The FPM sees electing a president as an opportunity, but it is not the only solution. It is important, and we can't do anything without a president, but it is not the only solution," Bassil went on in his speech. "That's why we proposed the matters of administrative decentralization and a state asset fund," he added.

Earlier this month, FPM MP Caesar Abi Khalil who is helping to draft a bill along these lines, told L’Orient-Le Jour, “The idea ]of the state asset fund] is to turn public companies, such as Lebanon’s Tobacco Regie or Ogero, into Lebanese limited companies and then transfer ownership to this trust fund."

The fund, it is would be run by an “independent board of directors,” which would be responsible for overseeing its assets in partnership with the private sector, which could take on the management of these companies or buy shares and become owners.

"The money of the Lebanese should go into the trust fund because it should not remain in the hands of the system,” Bassil insisted in his speech.

By mentioning the system, the FPM head targets the "traditional parties," and notably the Amal Movement headed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Bassil doesn't include his own party in the system, despite being part of successive cabinets and parliaments for several decades.

The problem of arms

Bassil also insisted that with a decentralized system, "the regions enjoy their authority and administration without secession from the central state."

He added that these two demands "do not lead to solutions to the problem of arms" circulating in the country or the "problem of defense strategy" — remarks broadly considered to refer to Hezbollah, the last Civil War group to maintain an armed wing in Lebanon.

Bassil again insisted on his decentralization project during a Sunday visit, alongside Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai, to an electricity generating station in the Kadisha Valley in northern Lebanon.

"Each region can be self-sufficient with its own resources. The central state in Lebanon has failed to develop the regions and serve the population by exploiting state facilities, but this power plant project shows us the way to becoming electrically self-sufficient,'' Bassil said during the visit.

Bsharri MP William Tawk, who supported the power plant project, was also present at the event. Tawk is a member of Tony Frangieh's Marada Movement parliamentary bloc. Tony Frangieh is the son of Sleiman Frangieh.