Hezbollah Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Monday said that the ‘natural candidate’ his party backs for the presidency of the republic is Marada Movement chief, Sleiman Frangieh.
‘The natural candidate whom Hezbollah supports in the presidential elections and who meets our qualifications is Sleiman Frangieh,’ Nasrallah told a televised speech in commemoration of the ‘Day of the Wounded.’
‘For us, there is no such thing as Hezbollah’s candidate; we have a candidate whom we back,’ he explained.
‘[Former] president Michel Aoun was not Hezbollah’s candidate, but we backed him as a natural candidate.’
Touching on the ties with the Free Patriotic Movement, Nasrallah revealed that during a meeting he held with MP Gebran Bassil, he explained to him the qualifications Hezbollah seeks in the new president. ‘We told him that you and the Marada Movement leader enjoy these qualifications, but since you do not want to run for the elections, then the candidate we are backing is Frangieh.’
‘In the last meeting between the FPM and Hezbollah delegations, we proposed to submit a list of names, including the name of Frangieh,’ he continued.
‘We are keen on the February 6 Memorandum of Understanding,’ he reiterated. ‘But,’ he said, ‘this agreement did not turn us into one party; we are still two parties.’ ‘Nothing in the MoU obliges any party to agree on a president, a speaker or a prime minister.’
‘Our support for president Michel Aoun in the last elections was not because of a clause in the MoU, and today, our support for Frangieh’s candidacy does not mean that we abandon or retreat from this agreement,’ said Nasrallah, stressing the importance of pacification, dialogue and communication. ‘Otherwise, we will have to coexist with the presidential vacuum.’
Nasrallah underlined that his party certainly wants the election of a president and that it is not seeking vacuum. ‘We are committed to the two-thirds quorum in the firs and second rounds of the presidential vote. We do not accept that foreign forces impose a president on us,’ he said. ‘We do not accept foreign vetoes on any candidate,’ he added.
Source: National News Agency – Lebanon