Head of the ‘Marada’ Movement, Sleiman Franjieh, considered that ‘being Christians means preserving the free economic system and restoring confidence in the banking sector,’ and ‘to be Christians in Lebanon implies being Lebanese who give and sacrifice for Lebanon, and if Lebanon is in danger, we will all be Lebanese, united and with one heart…’

In his address today marking the 46th commemoration of the Ehden massacre on June 13, 1978, Franjieh said: ‘In the history of the First Republic, the Maronites gave Lebanon the best figures for the Presidency of the Republic, Bshara El-Khoury, Camille Chamoun, Fouad Chehab, Sleiman Franjieh…and during their reign, Lebanon was prosperous and witnessed its golden age.’

He recalled that former President Sleiman Franjieh was not the strongest Christian in the late sixties, nor did he enjoy a popular majority at that time like Sheikh Pierre Gemayel and President Chamoun. However, despite that fact, members of the Parliament Council back then elected Sleiman Franjieh
as President of the Republic, as he explained.

Franjieh continued to indicate that after the Taif Agreement, the concept of the Presidency of the Republic changed and so did the nature of the system, whereby the president became more of an arbiter than the actual head of the executive authority, and a large portion of Christians complained about the decline in the role of the president and his ability to influence the political system.

He went on to explain that after 2005, the team of former President Michel Aoun put forward an equation which implied that the President of the Republic must be the one with most representation among the Christians, similar to the Parliament Speaker who represents the Shiites the most and the Prime Minister who represents the Sunnis the most… ‘This equation was translated in 2014 in the meeting in Bkirki, in which I participated…I had clear and frank observations in characterizing and classifying the strong president, yet despite that, I agreed so that it would not be sai
d that I stood against consensus and harmony,’ Franjieh explained.

At this current stage, Franjieh considered that if we were to comply with such a formula and the logic of President Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement, then the Lebanese Forces Chief Samir Geagea ought to be FPM’s natural candidate for presidency.

Source: National News Agency – Lebanon