Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai, during a mass in Bkirki. (Credit: NNA)
More than a year and a half after the end of Michel Aoun's six-year term, Bkirki and Dar al-Fatwa continue to advocate for the election of a president of the republic in Lebanon. On Saturday, the head of the Maronite Church, Bechara al-Rai, and Grand Mufti Abdel-Latif Derian called on members of Parliament to engage in dialogue in order to break the presidential election deadlock, while many observers believe that the political impasse is set to continue, with no prospect of a resolution until the situation in Gaza and southern Lebanon has been resolved.
In a speech delivered at a conference entitled "Renewal for the Country," Rai said that "no one dares to initiate a frank and sincere national dialogue that transcends personal and factional interests, and no one sees the point of responding to an invitation to dialogue that does not seriously delve into the essence of the points of disagreement that have accumulated to the point of becoming time bombs."
"The boycott resulting from the lack of trust between the Lebanese prevails today," he continued.
"We want a president to change and create a new, clean national environment, ethical behavior, a commitment to historical constants, positive relations with the world, an end to dependency and the fragmentation of legitimacy, and a new approach to problems," Rai said, lamenting that the country has become "an open field for all possibilities of destruction." He also noted that "social cantons have appeared in Lebanese circles" and expressed regret that these cantons are ‘deliberating on how to become politicized." Finally, he criticized the fact that "Lebanese society has become familiar with problems and intractable when it comes to solutions."
Call for dialogue
For its part, Dar al-Fatwa stressed on Saturday the need to "establish a climate of dialogue, convergence and understanding between all political components to elect a president of the republic and abandon political tensions, rigidity in positions, quarrels, rivalries, distances, division and cleavage, lest Lebanon slide into the unknown and then explosion and collapse."
The highest Sunni authority in the country called on Lebanon's MPs ‘to assume their national and constitutional duty and elect a unifying head of state, so that the presidential vacuum does not remain the master of the situation … nor connected with what is happening in the region." Finally, he called on the political parties "to adopt a rational national discourse far removed from sectarian slogans, to cooperate and … to engage in the unconditional dialogue required to reach a consensus leading to the election of a president."
Several months ago, the National Moderation bloc (comprised of Sunni MPs formerly aligned with Saad Hariri's Future Movement) launched an initiative aimed at bringing the protagonists together for a consultation session in Parliament to resolve the political crisis. The invitation was rejected by Hezbollah and Amal, which believes that only the speaker of Parliament has the authority to convene and chair talks between the parliamentary groups. Hezbollah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's Amal Movement are backing the candidacy of Marada leader Sleiman Frangieh for the presidency, while the opposition groups, joined by the Free Patriotic Movement (normally allied with Hezbollah) are in favor of the candidacy of former finance minister and International Monetary Fund executive Jihad Azour.