Bassil: Yes to National Pact, No to 'Bilateral, Tripartite or Four-Party Agreements'

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil reassured Sunday that the possible election of FPM founder MP Michel Aoun as president will not involve “bilateral, tripartite or four-party agreements” between political parties.

“The same as we struggled for liberation, today we are struggling for the National Pact,” Bassil told an FPM rally marking the October 13 anniversary outside the presidential palace in Baabda.

“Lebanon was liberated from hegemony and occupation and the country returned. We then returned to state institutions, the ministries and the parliament, and only the presidency remains,” he said.

The FPM chief warned that “without the National Pact, Lebanon is not a country of equal coexistence between Muslims and Christians.”

The 1943 National Pact is an unwritten agreement that set the foundations of modern Lebanon as a multi-confessional state based on Christian-Muslim partnership.

“Our dream is to clean the country from corruption, not garbage,” Bassil added.

“We do not want bilateral, tripartite or four-party agreements, but rather a National Pact,” he reassured.

“We want a resistant state that resists occupation and corruption. We want a state that is strong through its people and army. A state in which the strong does not devour the weak,” Bassil said.

He added: “We want national unity and our dream is seeing General Michel Aoun standing on the balcony of the presidential palace in Baabda saying, 'O great people of Lebanon!', alongside Lebanon's leaders.”

“We want a country that does not replace the Lebanese with refugees or displaced people,” Bassil went on to say.

FPM supporters had flocked from all Lebanese regions to mark the anniversary of the 1990 ouster of Aoun from the palace at the hands of Syrian forces.

Aoun served as the head of one of two rival governments contending for power in Lebanon from 1988 to October 1990.

He declared a so-called “liberation war” against Syrian forces stationed in Lebanon on March 14, 1989. On October 13, 1990, he was ousted from the presidential palace after the Syrian forces invaded the areas that were under his control.

Aoun's chances to be elected president have largely surged in recent days and Education Minister Elias Bou Saab of the FPM announced Sunday that al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri has officially decided to endorse Aoun's presidential bid.

Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum.

Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah.

The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.