Editor TLN
In the middle of Holy Week, Cardinal Raï will receive the Christian deputies in Harissa. Expectations are modest in the Vatican and in public opinion. Among the bishops there is a fear that the Maronite primate will lose prestige and authority if the initiative fails. The resumption of relations between Tehran and Riyadh could facilitate consensus on a name.
Beirut () – The objective is to break the impasse that prevents the election of a president. With this in mind, the Maronite Patriarch invited all Christian parliamentarians to a moment of “spiritual retreat” during Holy Week. On the other hand, the political expectations surrounding the meeting are modest, at least this is the general opinion in Vatican circles and in public opinion.
After several weeks of contacts between the parties, the Maronite Patriarch finally found the best way to bring together the 64 Christian deputies under his aegis: he summoned them to a “spiritual retreat” for a few hours. This is how he announced it at the feast of San José, last Sunday. The “retreat” will take place at the pilgrims’ hotel in Bethania (Harissa), on April 5, in the middle of Holy Week.
In his homily at the Mass of Saint Joseph, Card. Beshara Raï referred explicitly to the presidential elections, currently in a deadlock, and called for “honest and impartial dialogue” and “mutual listening, careful discernment of the decision to be made, without forcibly imposing an opinion partisan and without hidden calculations or double intentions”.
Although the meeting has a religious character, its political objective is evident: it aims to unblock the presidential election. The head of the Maronite Church has imposed a moral obligation on himself to get a positive response to his initiative, if only to rule out any possibility of rejecting the invitation immediately after receiving the refusal of the Lebanese Forces to start an intra-dialogue. Maronite in Bkerké.
And the ploy appears to have been successful. Until now, the Lebanese Forces and its leader Samir Geagea have rejected any meeting with Gebral Bassil, whom they accuse of betraying the party’s trust. However, they have confirmed that their deputies will participate in the Harissa meeting, together with the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement. For his part, the son-in-law of former president Michel Aoun welcomed the initiative without hesitation. Kataëb and Michel Mouawad’s Renovation block also responded positively. Christian members of the protest have been given the freedom to accept or decline the invitation. However, one of them, Najat Saliba, has already stated that he will not lend himself “to these games from another era.”
On the other hand, the initiative of the Maronite patriarch arouses concern on the Hezbollah side. The Shiite formation insists, together with the Amal movement, on having its candidate, Sleiman Frangié, elected, although this nomination clashes with the vetoes of the two large Christian blocs in the Chamber: the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement, as well as with the hostility of the Sunni “great elector” of the Lebanese scene: Saudi Arabia.
Speaking on behalf of the pro-Iranian formation, Sheikh Ahmad Kabalan recalled that Hezbollah is in favor of “a national commitment” as long as it can go “through Parliament.” The Party of God is doing the impossible -for the moment, without success- to gather around its candidate the 65 votes that would ensure his election in the second round of the elections. At this point, he can count on a weighty argument: the vote of the Shiite community, without whose support any presidential candidate could not achieve consensus.
On the other hand, in the name of the same principle of mutual consensus, the PSP (Progressive Socialists) of the Druze leader Walid Joumblatt has already said that it only wants to vote for a president elected in the first round with a two-thirds majority (86 deputies). In other words, a candidate who is not imposed by force on the two great Christian formations and who at least enjoys the support of one of them. Will the patriarchal initiative pave the way for Baabda for a consensual candidate? “It is asking too much”, says a former Maronite deputy, recalling that Patriarch Raï, after appearing neutral before the candidacies of Sleiman Frangié and Michel Mouawad, is looking for “a third way”.
Regional dynamics are also moving in this direction: ten days ago, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries. And according to some observers, this event would facilitate a political consensus around the future head of state.
However, taking into account the deep divisions between the two great political camps, the expectations that the meeting arouses are nonetheless moderate. A diplomatic source close to the Vatican said, on condition of anonymity, that “a crisis as serious as that of Lebanon will not be resolved with a meeting of a spiritual nature.” A Maronite bishop also expresses himself with relative skepticism, saying he is “concerned” about the complex logistics of the April 5 meeting, and fears that its failure and the defection of some Orthodox deputies will negatively affect “the moral authority of the patriarch.”
