 By: Elias Bejjani On October 5, 1998, Syrian President Hafez Assad appointed General Emil Lahoud President for Lebanon. The appointment was performed in a very humiliating, degrading and bizarre manner. The sequence of this disgraceful event, that no Lebanese should ever forget, was extremely shameful and showed no respect of any kind to the people of Lebanon. Mr. Elias Hrawi, Lebanon's president for the last eight years (appointed by Syria) was summoned to meet with the Syrian President in Damascus. After seven hours of cloaked talks, white smoke came out of Syria's presidential palace. The good news was announced: President Hafez Assad has appointed General Emil Lahoud, President for Lebanon. He also instructed Mr. Hrawi to call on Hariri's Cabinet to meet within forty-eight hours and amend Article 49 of the constitution. Mr. Assad also dictated that the Lebanese Parliament should meet within two weeks to finalize the appointment and make the affair look civilized and democratic. Hrawi returned to Beirut and announced the good news through his son-in-law, Lebanon's foreign Minister, Faris Boueiz from the Baabda presidential palace. Mr. Hariri instantly called General Lahoud from Saudi Arabia, and congratulated him. Mr. Berri, on his side, gave a statement saying, Mr. Lahoud is the right man for the right job, and thanked the Syrian president for his wise appointment. Mr. Berri seems to have forgotten he is the house speaker, not the Syrian President, and the Parliament that he heads is the constitutional body entrusted by the people according to the constitution to elect the president. In fact what has been happening in Lebanon since 1990, under the Syrian occupation is bizarre, shameful and unbelievable, but the mockery of this appointment is the most humiliating. General Lahoud is the 10th Lebanese President since Lebanon became an independent country , but the first to be appointed so bluntly by a foreign force. How could Lebanon be an independent country when its own president, the highest-ranking official, is appointed by the president of another country in a blunt and scandalous way. This reality did not surprise the "Patriotic Free Current" headed by General Michel Aoun. The Current has been opposing the occupational status quo since 1990 and does not recognize the legitimacy of the whole regime. The Current's stance with regard to the appointment mockery is based on its national convictions and principles: 1- The event in itself is meaningless: one agent is replacing another as dictated and orchestrated by the foreign power occupying the country. 2- Our complaint is nothing personal against General Lahoud, as a person. The Current's opposition is not based on who is appointed but on the whole humiliating process and on the occupation that stands behind all infringements of our people's rights. The same stance would have been taken with anyone appointed under similar circumstances. 3- General Lahoud will not be able to make any difference. He will be a secretary, just a secretary, obeying Syrian orders and instructions, even when he knows they hurt his own people and are contradictory to Lebanon's interests. 4- General Lahoud is not going to ask the Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon. On the contrary, he might be used to declare full unity between Lebanon and Syria. 5- General Lahoud is not going to negotiate with Israel, directly or indirectly, to withdraw from South Lebanon in accordance to UN resolutions 425, 426, 520. He has already, in his capacity as army leader, called for integration of both tracks, tying the fate of South Lebanon with that of the Syrian occupied Golan Heights. Accordingly, South Lebanon is going to stay under the Israeli occupation for a long, long time because Israel has annexed The Golan Heights and refuses to give it back to Syria. 6- Internally, General Lahoud will not be able to eradicate, or even reduce the corruption spread extensively in both public and private sectors, because those who appointed him are making huge profits from the ongoing Mafia-like environment. 7- General Lahoud will be impotent in facing the huge governmental debt, now more then 21 billion dollars. Most well informed financial experts are predicting it will increase and increase till the whole country declares bankruptcy. 8- General Lahoud will not be allowed to solve the Lebanese Diaspora's chronic dilemma, and none of its members will be helped to regain his ancestors' Lebanese citizenship. He will not be able to revoke the illegal decree that granted Lebanese citizenship in 1994 to 400,000 foreigners. On the contrary, he might agree to naturalize 500,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon since 1948. 9- General Lahoud will not be able to revoke the imposed status in which more than half of the Lebanese are dealt with as second class citizens. 10- General Lahoud will not be allowed to ask the Syrian President to release hundreds of innocent Lebanese detainees held in the Nazi-like detention centers some for years, without trials. Among these detainees are soldiers and officers from the Lebanese army and Christian priests. In general, General Lahoud will be guarding the occupational imposed status quo, no less no more and, in accordance with his master's directions, doing exactly as Mr. Harwi has been shamefully doing for the last eight years. Should Mr. Lahoud choose to follow in shameful footsteps, his reputation will be sullied. And since there is no hope for any change under the Syrian occupational umbrella, Mr. Lahoud's future reputation does seem doomed. Free and patriotic Lebanese will not change their opposition stance to the whole regime and its masters, the occupants, no matter who are the appointed officials. They will reconsider support only when the regime officials join the struggle for liberation and call for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, Syrians, Israelis and others, and arrange for a free election under the supervision of international neutral observers with the protection of the Lebanese army. There must be respect for human rights, a call for the release of all detainees in Lebanon and Syria, and an agreement on forming a transitional national government which will respect the rights of the millions of Lebanese living in the Diaspora. Long Live Free Lebanon. |