BEIRUT: Progressive Socialist Party head Walid Jumblatt forecast a grim future for Lebanon Thursday, saying that Parliament was headed towards an extension, and predicting a prolonged presidential vacuum and worsened security condition.
“There will be no regional change in the interest of Lebanon during the current phase,” Jumblatt said in in interview with Al-Akhbar published Thursday.
"This will lead the country towards a parliamentary extension and a prolonged presidential vacuum," he added.
A parliamentary extension is contingent on the presidential vote, Jumblatt said. “As soon as a president is elected..., parliamentary elections will follow.” But presidential elections won’t take place any time soon, he added.
Rival factions have tied the fate of Lebanon's presidency to the outcome of Syria's war, with some betting on the fall of the Syrian regime and others believing it will survive, he said.
“I was not one of the people who bet on the quick fall of the regime.... I knew that it was going to be a long battle.”
Jumblatt also said that Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea and MP Sami Gemayel had traveled to Saudi Arabia in order to conduct talks with Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri alongside other officials. The meeting aimed to ensure that a parliamentary extension would be constitutional and that Christian figures would be included in the decision to extend Parliament.
Henri Helou, Jumblatt’s presidential candidate, has been deemed the barrier to securing quorum over a single candidate. Backed by 10 parliamentary votes, Helou’s nomination prevents the two main rival candidates, Geagea and Free Patriotic Movement Head Michel Aoun, from acquiring the majority of votes. Jumblatt rejected any suggestion calling for a withdrawal of Helou’s candidacy, saying that “other candidates are not any better than Helou.”
Aoun has not officially declared his candidacy, but he is widely acknowledged as being the March 8 pick.
The presidential deadlock is not a result of Helou's candidacy, according to Jumblatt, but instead, could be boiled down to two main barriers: The first involves the discord between rival candidates Geagea and Aoun, while the second is characterized by the lack of dialogue between Hariri and Hezbollah Chief Hasan Nasrallah.
Shifting to security issues, the PSP head said that "Lebanon is now directly involved in the Syrian war," but said it was "meaningless" to blame Hezbollah for that. The situation in the eastern village of Brital and the northeastern town of Arsal, which are among several border towns that have recently been targeted by militants, serves to prove Lebanon’s direct involvement in the Syrian war, he said.
Jumblatt said that “he feared for the safety of all of Lebanon,” citing tensions within the Druze community as evidence of broader tensions overwhelming the country.
Jumblatt's concern is not restricted solely to Lebanon, with the PSP head also expressing his fears over the deterioration of the Arab world. Not a single national entity formed after the Sykes-Picot agreement between former colonial powers Britan and France is left today, Jumblatt said. The ISIS threat, which is derived from "years of poverty and tyrannical rule," has succeeded in wiping out the previous mapping of the region and is "dragging the Arab world in to the unknown," he added. “This the challenge,” Jumblatt said, referring to the preservation of Lebanon as a national entity in the face of this threat.
Separately, the PSP head recalled a heated argument between the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and Syrian President Bashar Assad, during Hariri’s 2004 visit to Damascus, one year before his assassination. Jumblatt quoted Assad saying to Hariri: “I am the one who makes the orders here.”
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