“The Stagnation of the Presidential File: An Overview of Lebanon’s Political Landscape”

Youssef Fares wrote in Markazia:

The rapid developments in the region imposed a negative stagnation in the presidential file, in which time passes with marginal movements, useless formal meetings, and repetitions of the same confrontational positions, while the movement of friendly and fraternal endeavors not only seems to have entered a temporary break after the Jeddah Summit, but rather it is feared that it will impose a new agenda that will become a movement with it. The endeavors are secondary, if you don’t disrupt them.

And if the recent diplomatic activity, in the context of which the meetings of the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Walid al-Bukhari, took place, drew a road map for the completion of the presidential elections on the basis that the Lebanese bear their national responsibility in this regard, the internal realities are still opposite to this trend and reject the behavior of any internal passage towards consensus. on the country’s president. However, what is remarkable in this context is what seemed to be a new attempt to confuse the interior and confuse the positives generated by that movement, that by returning to flooding the country with rumors and fantasies such as talking about that this movement sought to promote presidential options and new names for the presidency of the republic, or interpretations Old-new says the Saudi position what it did not say, specifically about refusing or turning a blind eye to the arrival of the head of the Marada Movement, Suleiman Franjieh, to the presidency, in addition to talking about a presidential dialogue outside Lebanon, and that is nothing but fabrications in lost time.

Member of the Strong Republic Bloc, Representative Razi Al-Hajj, confirms to Al-Markaziya that he is not optimistic about all the internal and external movement in the presidential file, attributing this to the Shiite duo’s adherence to the head of the Marada Movement, Suleiman Franjieh, as a single, single, irreplaceable candidate, even at the expense of the homeland, thus jumping above the will of the Christian forces. The entire rejection of this nomination, given that his accession to the presidency will constitute an extension of the previous era that brought the country to this gendarmerie of collapse at all levels.

He goes on to point out that the consensual winds that swept the face of the region and were translated into an agreement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Iran have not yet reached the Lebanese arena, where each team is still sticking to its positions refusing to put the country on the path of recovery and its entry point is the election of a sovereign president of the republic who is not calculated on an axis, especially the axis of resistance.

In response to a question about the opposition’s lack of agreement on a presidential candidate, he says: “There is agreement on more than one name and a person who gets fifty votes, but not securing the number necessary for his victory is what prevents him from being named so far. Talks are ongoing with the Free Patriotic Movement to reach the required outcome for victory, but there is no Confidence in the head of the movement, Gebran Bassil, is what delays the agreement on the future president of the country, and thus securing the parliamentary majority necessary for his victory.