Gemayel: We'll block vote if others want to elect pro-Hezbollah president
Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel on Friday voiced strongly-worded stances against Hezbollah and vowed to block the presidential vote if “the other camp decides to elect a president who would cover up for Hezbollah’s arms for six more years.”
“We will not be dragged into weapons because we know the value of blood, martyrs and war,” Gemayel said in a speech at Kataeb’s 32nd Congress.
“The Kataeb Party was not an advocate of war, but it was dragged (into civil war) because the state was absent and the army vanished. Today we want the state and the army, but if they (rivals) approach our homes we will defend ourselves,” Gemayel added.
“We tell Hezbollah that we’re unwilling to continue with this situation, and if divorce between the two republics is what’s needed, let Hezbollah declare that, but we will not accept to live as second-class citizens,” Gemayel went on to say, referring to what he called the “Islamic republic” of Hezbollah and the Lebanese republic.
“The Islamic republic is destroying the spirit of the Lebanese republic through changing its culture and turning it into a culture of wars, whereas the Lebanese aspire to live and not to die,” the Kataeb chief added.
Criticizing the now-defunct March 14 camp, to which Kataeb once belonged, Gemayel said his party’s “problem with March 14” was its “performance.”
“I mean the performance of its officials, who went from one settlement to another, all the way to surrendering the country and electing the president of the Islamic republic as the head of the state,” Gemayel added.
Source: Naharnet
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