The leader of the Kataeb party, Samy Gemayel, and journalist Walid Abboud during a televised interview in Saifi. (Credit: NNA)
The president of the Kataeb party, Samy Gemayel, a well-known opponent of Hezbollah, said in a televised interview broadcast Wednesday night that the Shiite party should be completely disarmed before the organization of the next parliamentary elections, theoretically scheduled for May 2026, in order to guarantee their “freedom.” Disarmament and the elections are the two biggest issues in current Lebanese politics and are at the heart of tensions among different parties.
In his interview on Télé Liban, the country’s only public channel, Mr. Gemayel pointed out the “ambiguity” that continues to surround the contentious issue of how expatriates will vote in the legislative elections. An article of the 2017 electoral law provides for six seats to be added to the 128 of the chamber and reserved for candidates and voters from the diaspora. The application of this method is still unclear, and it was canceled during the two previous elections (2018 and 2022). Part of the political class wants this article to be amended so that emigrants vote for all 128 seats, denouncing the allocation of six reserved parliamentarians as an attempt to dilute the impact of the diaspora vote on the political balance.
Other parties, such as Hezbollah, the Amal movement, and the Free Patriotic Movement, oppose such an amendment. The Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berry, who is also the head of the Amal movement, refuses to submit this issue to a vote in the chamber and, meanwhile, the government has set May 10 for the election, while most forces agree on the possibility of a “technical postponement” of several months.
However, according to Samy Gemayel, apart from Mr. Berry, “the parliamentary majority supports the expatriate vote for the 128 (seats),” but the problem mainly concerns the “freedom” of the elections in areas “under the influence of weapons,” meaning regions where Hezbollah is dominant. He therefore called for “weapons to be handed over to the state or the army to be deployed before the electoral deadline.”
During the last elections, local observers denounced “pressure” on voters in many regions, including those controlled by the Shiite duo. The government and the Ministry of the Interior must “make courageous decisions to control weapons and limit them to the Lebanese army,” he insisted, warning against “keeping the country in a quagmire where each party tries to pull Lebanon in the direction it wishes.” He added that “the Shiite community is an essential and founding partner of Lebanon and must feel reassured,” emphasizing that his dispute is with Hezbollah, “an instrument for carrying out Tehran’s policies in Lebanon,” and not with its community. “The theory of armed resistance has been tried and has failed,” Mr. Gemayel also added. And he insisted: “Even at the peak of its power, with Sayyed Hassan [Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah, assassinated by Israel] and ballistic missiles, it failed.”
