The leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Gebran Bassil, during the party's 10th annual conference in Sin al-Fil, on March 16, 2025. (Screenshot taken from the live broadcast on X)
The head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Gebran Bassil, stated on Saturday that his party did not intend to undermine the work of the new government of Nawaf Salam, in which it does not participate, in his second speech in 48 hours, after the one he delivered Friday evening at a fundraising dinner.
"The opposition does not sulk and does not undermine. The opposition encourages the government ... to succeed, as it monitors, questions, warns and corrects. It does not object for the sake of objecting; it does not reject for the sake of rejection; it has alternatives. We will have a shadow government that will objectively follow each ministry, help the minister, encourage him where he wishes, and criticize him where needed," said the FPM leader at the party's 10th annual conference held in Sin al-Fil, in the suburbs of Beirut.
'Two Reasons'
Bassil, son-in-law of former President Michel Aoun, explained that his party found itself in the opposition "for two reasons."
"The first is that our freedom of decision does not allow us to accept someone imposing choices on us as others have accepted," he stated, drawing a parallel to the events of 2005 when General Aoun, the party's founder, returned to Lebanon after 15 years of exile in France and placed himself in the opposition.
"We are out of the government because they do not want us inside, as they fear our freedom of decision on the national level," relegating to second place the fact that the FPM was an ally of Hezbollah until deep disagreements strained this alliance "since 2022."
"We have proven that we are the only ones not influenced by the pressures on Lebanon," he said.
The Batroun MP also urged "all those who have caused Lebanon to fail through their hatred of Michel Aoun and the FPM to move beyond this hatred and not provoke another failure for Lebanon and its new president." He called for the unity of political forces facing "existential threats," referring to the Israeli occupation of several positions in south Lebanon beyond the Feb. 18 withdrawal deadline set as part of the Nov. 27 cease-fire, which ended more than 14 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah.
"Lebanon cannot remain an arena of sectarian rivalry fueled by Syria and the region, spare us civil conflicts," he stated.
Israeli Occupation
Bassil criticized "the Israeli occupation" that extended to a new area near Houla in "international silence and domestic acceptance."
"This places Lebanon face to face with the danger of the Israeli expansionist project, which the cease-fire agreement and Resolution 1701 have not stopped," he said, referring to the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel and has yet to be fully implemented.
"The existential danger [that threatens Lebanon] must be addressed in its entirety, from Egypt to Jordan, from Palestine to Syria, from Iraq to Lebanon, and this prompts us to call on everyone to come together and formulate a national project that preserves existence, that of Lebanon, of the entity and the state," he said.
Commenting on the recent developments in Syria, particularly the massacres of civilians that occurred on the sidelines of clashes between fighters loyal to former President Bashar al-Assad and the new forces of Syrian Islamist rebels who overthrew him, Gebran Bassil described a "tragic Syrian scene" that "places the Lebanese before the challenge of protecting diversity" and, by extension, their "identity." Several thousand people have fled the fighting in western Syria to seek refuge in northern Lebanon.
Decentralization
General Michel Aoun was elected president in 2016 after more than two years of presidential vacancy, linked to political tensions. In 2022, at the end of his term, during which erupted the economic and financial crisis that still plagues the country, new tensions blocked the presidential election for more than two years. A situation that ultimately led to the election of another general, the commander of the army, General Joseph Aoun. Although the FPM opposed this candidacy, it gave its votes but did not grant its confidence to the new government, although it had supported the candidacy of its leader, Nawaf Salam.
Gebran Bassil also advocated for administrative and financial decentralization.
"Lebanon must remain a centralized state in its political decisions, in the fields of Foreign Affairs and Defense, but it cannot continue without deep decentralization. Decentralization is neither partition nor separation, but rather fair development that benefits all regions," he explained.
He called for "comprehensive secularism, not selective secularism," as this would amount to the elimination of the Christian community, and warned against "any violation of the electoral law" that distorts the communal representation of the country in the institutions.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
