Is Jibran Bassil destroying Lebanon’s FPM party?

Beirut: Lebanon’s pro-Syrian Free Patriotic Movement seems to be facing an internal crisis as key officials of the party face mounting criticism from within.

Jibran Bassil, Lebanon’s maverick foreign minister and also son-in-law of FPM founder Michel Aoun, has borne the brunt of criticism.

Aoun, who presided over the FPM from 2005 to 2015, turned party reigns over to his son-in-law, Bassil.

Though the FPM enjoys significant backing from Lebanese Christians, it seems to be on the brink of internal collapse. The FPM, as a whole, is being broadly criticised as a party that no longer respects its own rules and regulations but kowtows to Bassil’s every whim.

Some within the party have expressed concern that Bassil is only after enhancing his own power at the expense of abandoning democratic practices and forcing his fellow party members into submission.

Many FPM members worry that Bassil seized control of the party despite earlier pledges to consult and share power within the politburo, while several fear that this type of consolidation will increase the number of dissidents, which will sharply weaken the FPM in the forthcoming 2017 parliamentary elections.

It is no longer tolerated to speak against him in public and FPM members Naim Aoun, Ziad Abs, and Tony Nasrallah were all reprimanded after voicing their opinions.

Aoun, a nephew of the founder, was called before an FPM disciplinary tribunal allegedly because he criticised Bassil during a television interview on July 16.

A defiant Aoun, challenged the FPM to open his disciplinary hearing to all party members, although this was unlikely to occur as he blamed the current president, Bassil, for operating without any consideration for due process.

Abs was also singled out apparently because he wished to run for the party office against the president’s wishes.

Nasrallah — a man who fought alongside General Aoun against the Syrians during the latter’s three-decades-long occupation of the country — was reprimanded for publishing a scathing article that Bassil did not approve of.

Bassil’s rise to power has been largely viewed as nepotism as he never held a parliamentary post and has relatively little political experience.