Geagea: We Will Not Tolerate Berri as Speaker in 2013

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea indirectly admitted that the March 14 forces had committed a mistake by agreeing to maintaining Speaker Nabih Berri in his position after the camp won a majority in the 2009 parliamentary elections, reported al-Akhbar newspaper on Thursday.

He told the daily: “With all due respect to Berri, we can no longer tolerate him as parliament speaker. We must form a harmonious government just as the other camp did.”

He revealed that discussions with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri in Jeddah last week tackled the parliamentary elections, the formation of a new government, but not the presidency in Lebanon.

“What would be the point of the 2013 elections if we committed the same errors as the ones in 2009?” asked the LF leader.

Geagea said: “Discussions with Hariri addressed potential candidates for parliament speaker and prime minister.”

“It is too soon to speak about the presidency,” he added.

The presidential election is set for 2014.

On the 2013 parliamentary elections, Geagea warned that the other camp may be seeking to postpone approving the electoral law in the new year

He added that Hariri voiced to him his rejection of proportional representation in the electoral law.

“He is very flexible in discussing variations of the adoption of small-sized electoral districts, but he is completely against proportional representation,” he stressed.

“At first we were not in agreement over our view of the electoral law, but after a second and third meeting, we agreed that the draft law based on small-sized districts is good,” revealed the LF leader.

“We will now await discussions with other parties in order to garner their agreement. We cannot adopt it without consulting others,” he remarked.

“We believe it to be a very good law. We will continue our efforts with other Christian factions and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat. I believe the most important talks over the elections will be limited to the MP and Hariri,” noted Geagea.

“We will also contact Jumblat to overcome current obstacles,” he said without going into details.

Opposition MPs George Adwan, Sami Gemayel and Butros Harb proposed an electoral law based on 50 small-sized districts in a winner-takes-all system, while a plan suggested by MP Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc would allow every sect to elect its own MPs under a proportional representation system with Lebanon as a single district.

In August, the cabinet approved an electoral draft law based on proportional representation and 13 districts.