BEIRUT: The Free Patriotic Movement Wednesday dismissed talks of a rift between party leader Michel Aoun and Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai.
“Relations with Bkirki [the seat of the Maronite Church] are not severed despite differences in views between the two sides,” MP Ibrahim Kanaan told the Voice of Lebanon radio station.
"Constitutional issues and the process of achieving real results need a national unanimous decision,” Kanaan, who heads the FPM's Change and Reform bloc in Parliament, said of the stalled presidential election.
Media reports have surfaced Tuesday indicating Aoun has boycotted Bkirki after Rai accused him of blocking the presidential vote.
The reports pointed to Aoun’s absence from the Easter Mass, whereas former President Michel Sleiman and Kataeb Party leader Amine Gemayel attended.
They said Aoun neither visited Bkirki to offer Easter greetings, while his arch Christian foe, Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, met Rai after he took part in the Mass celebrated in Bkirki on Good Friday.
Rai has lamented Parliament’s repeated failure to elect a president, warning that the 10-month-long vacuum in the country’s top Christian post paralyzed state institutions and put Lebanon in jeopardy.
He implicitly blamed MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary bloc and its March 8 allies for blocking the election of a successor to Sleiman, whose six-year term ended on May 25.
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