Aoun Accuses Suleiman of Harming Christian Rights: Miqati Resigned for Silly Reasons
Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Saturday that Prime Minister Najib Miqati's resignation “surprised us and yet didn't,” while accusing President Michel Suleiman of harming the rights of Christians.
He told al-Mada radio: “Miqati resigned for silly reasons.”
He added that one should head to “one of the embassies” in Lebanon in order to uncover the real purposes of the resignation, saying that he has “not yet understood why Miqati stepped down from his post.”
On the consultations to form a new government, the MP remarked: “Naming a new prime minister is a complicated issue.”
“The country is living in chaos and the government could not even refer an officer to retirement,” Aoun said in reference to the end of Ashraf Rifi's term as head of the Internal Security Forces.
Rifi's “predecessors were more loyal to the country than he is and they all left their post at the end of their tenure,” remarked the FPM leader.
“Several crises erupted under Rifi's term. Failure to find his successor is an insult to the ISF,” he stressed.
Miqati announced his resignation on Friday night in light of the cabinet's failure to approve the decisions to form of an authority to oversee the parliamentary elections and extend Rifi's term.
He said that all political powers “must assume their responsibilities in order to steer Lebanon away from the unknown.”
Turning to Suleiman, Aoun accused the president of “violating the rights of all Christian sects, as well as some Muslim ones who rejected the 1960 parliamentary electoral law.”
“Suleiman employed his authority against his sect” when he rejected the Orthodox Gathering electoral law, he noted.
The law, advocated by Aoun and a number of Christian parties, divides Lebanon into a single district and allows each sect to vote for its own MPs under a proportional representation system.
The proposal has been rejected by Suleiman, Miqati, the Mustaqbal bloc, centrist National Struggle Front of MP Walid Jumblat, and the March 14 opposition’s Christian independent MPs, who said that the law fuels sectarianism in Lebanon.
In another interview later on Saturday, Aoun told OTV: "The reasons behind Miqati's resignation are well-known: there is a local and international desire to hold elections according to the 1960 law."
He noted that "this resignation opens the door to either a solution or a crisis."
"The provocation that happened is the attempt to hold elections according to the 1960 law or the attempt to obstruct the elections, especially that the Mustaqbal bloc can only win under the 1960 law," Aoun added.
Asked about the security situation in the wake of the government's resignation, Aoun said: "There is no governmental vacuum and the military forces on the ground are obliged to preserve security and take the necessary measures."
Asked about the issue of relaunching national dialogue, Aoun said: "Dialogue would be beneficial only if it has a goal, because we wasted a lot of time without being able to achieve a result" in the previous rounds.
"The government's resignation did not annoy us, because we had a lot of reservations over its performance," Aoun noted.
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