Hizbullah Will Not Allow Government to Be Toppled

Contacts are being held away from the media spotlight in an attempt to ease the government tensions over the electricity file, reported the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper on Sunday.

Political sources warned that the dispute over the file may be the beginning of division among the March 8 camp-led government.

They stressed however that Hizbullah “will not allow the government to be toppled seeing as it represents its political base.”

The party is therefore seeking to overcome the current crisis over the electricity file in a manner that would appease Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat.

Meanwhile, informed sources told the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa newspaper in remarks published on Sunday that Jumblat’s rejection of the electricity file is a political message to Aoun to halt his push for the adoption of proportional representation in the parliamentary elections electoral law.

They explained that the FPM leader is seeking to weaken Jumblat in his Chouf stronghold, which will alter the distribution of power in the Mount Lebanon region that has existed since the days of the Druze leader’s father Kamal Jumblat.

Jumblat “will never abandon this historic equation that allowed for the representation of various sects” in the MP’s parliamentary bloc, they added.

Should Aoun succeed, then the Druze leader will lose the Christian representation in the bloc, they noted.