Beirut: In what were clear signs of retaliation, Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) supporters allegedly vandalised a monument honouring former President Michel Sulaiman on Sunday in Jbeil, and hung their party’s flag in front of the residence of the sole female minister in the Lebanese Cabinet, Alice Shabtini.
The latter, a former judge and a Sulaiman ally, criticised the FPM by saying they were inflating their popularity especially among Christians, which Foreign Minister Jibran Bassil has monopolised of late.
These unprecedented acts of vandalism highlighted both sectarian divisions — even among Christians — as well as FPM frustration at their inabilities to advance interests that are topped by appointing Michel Aoun president of the republic.
The Jbeil vandalism of a public monument displayed crass behaviour as they defaced the name of the former president on the plaque with spray paint, replacing it with “Aoun”. Sulaiman granted television interviews on Sunday evening during which he lamented the lack of ethics, and reiterated that political frustration cannot be resolved by name calling, boycotts, or criminal acts — which vandalism is, at least in theory.
An aggravated Bassil insisted on a boycott of last Thursday’s Cabinet session after the Minister of Defence, Samir Moqbel, extended the term of Major-General Mohammad Kheir as secretary-general of the Higher Defence Council, over strong FPM objections. Bassil is also livid that Moqbel pledged to extend the term of Lebanese Army commander General Jean Qahwaji, allegedly because such extensions were unlawful.
In voicing his opposition to the government’s work, however, Bassil referred to the National Charter and insisted that Muslims in general and Sunnis in particular were not applying the Charter, ostensibly because the Future Movement refused to preselect Michel Aoun as the head of state. In recent weeks, Bassil repeatedly affirmed that the FPM represented “95 per cent of the Christians” that, in the words of Minister Alice Shabtini, made the “movement seem more important than it actually is”.
Earlier in the week, Shabtini did not mince her words and played on the terms used by Bassil who said “cursed are those who are not applying the National Charter”; “cursed are those who are not selecting Aoun”; and “cursed are those who try to uproot us from cabinet through holding sessions that violate the National Pact”.
The Minister of the Displaced, whose writ includes reconciliation between the different communities that fought in the 15-year-long civil war, used the same terms when she said: “Even if he is claiming that he represents 95 per cent of the Christians, he doesn’t have the right to speak in the name of the rest of the Christians.”
“The greatest betrayal,” she elaborated, “is the contribution to vandalising the country and I tell Bassil that he is, willingly and unwillingly, dragging the country to division and in the best case to federalism ... cursed is anyone who doesn’t help fill the presidential post.”
Michel Aoun, who is backed by Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces, refuses to drop out of the presidential race and insists that the post is his. Both the Future Movement and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri are among his principal opponents, though all of these political shenanigans have seldom led to acts of violence.
On Sunday evening, former President Sulaiman tied various lose ends together and concluded that Cabinet boycotts meant the FPM would miss an opportunity to appoint a replacement for Qahwaji. He added: “we congratulate Jean Qahwaji on leading the Army again,” and hoped that the FPM leadership would have the moral fortitude to hold accountable those who carried out the latest criminal acts.
