LCP supports Maronites, despite neutrality

BEIRUT - Alternative Staff

January/February 2006

BEIRUT: Despite its announced neutrality, the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) has rarely expressed stances that fall in line with its policy.

During electoral elections, and despite its continuous attacks on corruption and sectarianism, the LCP joined Michel Aoun’s lists, which put them alongside Syria’s first ally in Lebanon and former Health Minister Suleiman Franjieh. The LCP repeatedly failed to justify its alliance with Franjieh.

But if the alliance with Franjieh was a mere slip or miscalculation, the LCP repeatedly praised another sectarian figure, Aoun.

On December 21, an LCP delegation visited Aoun. “We consider that [Aoun’s] Free Patriotic Movement [FPM] stands for sovereignty, reform and the new concept of citizenship that is currently missing in Lebanon,” Khaled Hdadeh, LCP’s Secretary-General, told reporters after the meeting.

Hdaded described Aoun and his FPM as an anti-sectarian group. “We need to unify all the forces that seek to build this state, save it and fix its weak structure that is based on the system of sectarian division-of-spoils,” Hdadeh said.

But slso on December 21, Aoun called for the formation of a cabinet “of poles” during an interview with Hizbullah’s TV Al-Manar. According to Aoun, such government should be formed of the heads of the three biggest sects in Lebanon namely the Maronites, the Shiites and the Sunnis. “I will represent the Christians in such a government,” Aoun told Al-Manar.

Alternative emailed the LCP about its presumed neutrality while it supports the man who presents himself as the Maronite representative in Lebanon. Alternative has not received any LCP replies yet.