BEIRUT: With minorities facing death and persecution at the hands of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Lebanon’s Christians must lay aside their rivalries and agree on who should fill the vacant presidency, a leading Druze politician has warned.
Walid Jumblatt, the most influential figure in Lebanon’s Druze community, says he is as alarmed as anyone by the rise of the radical Islamist group guided by a puritanical vision of Islam that is a major threat to religious minorities including his own. Christians and Yazidis have fled its advance in Iraq.
Jumblatt said Christian leaders in Lebanon, itself the target of a deadly incursion by Islamic State fighters from Syria this month, needed to recognise the danger of what is going on the region and agree on a new head of state.
Lebanon’s presidency, the only one reserved for a Christian in the Arab world, has been vacant since May, when Michel Suleiman’s term ended. Parliament has repeatedly failed to elect his successor in the absence of a political agreement. Many observers believe that such an accord must be brokered by rival regional states that wield critical influence over Lebanon’s competing alliances, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran. But Jumblatt said the problem was “local”.
“It’s a Christian mistake. They are not seeing what is (going on) in the surroundings,” he said. “It’s up to them to know that by keeping this division they are making the Christian presence in Lebanon weaker and weaker. They are weakening themselves and weakening Lebanon.”
Once the dominant force in Lebanon, the Maronites today stand divided between rival alliances that define the country’s crises-ridden politics: The March 8 coalition including Shia group Hezbollah, and the Saudi-backed March 14 alliance led by Sunni politician Saad Al Hariri. With Maronite leaders including civil war foes Michel Aoun and Samir Geagea both eyeing the presidency, it will only likely be filled by a deal on a candidate acceptable to all.
Army chief Jean Kahwaji is seen as one potential candidate. Both Suleiman and his predecessor, Emile Lahoud, were former army commanders.
REUTERS
