Forces of 8th & 14th of March… Go back to politics, the time of pretending the cleverness is over

Written by Nasser Kandil,

To prevent accusing this article of a racial discrimination in describing the forces of the Fourteenth of March alone by practicing the policy of pretending to be clever in managing the presidential issue, it must be recognized that this pretence which is represented by the blockade nominations which are unable to achieve a breakthrough in the presidential vacancy; the nomination of the Deputy Suleiman Franjieh by the Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri and the nomination of the General Michael Aoun by the Head of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea. were not achieved the political incident without the presence of a partner from the team of the Eighth of March that has accepted the participation in Tango dance , it has granted this pretence its legitimacy till it becomes an initiative

Without taking into considerations the black intentions which are related to the attempt of alienating the Christian followers of the two leaders Aoun and Franjieh away from the choice of the resistance, and showing it accused in both cases of the abandonment of one of its allies and accepting the local intentions for the two initiatives. It can be said that the concern of their nominators was originally the gains which can be achieved categorically through mixing the papers in an environment that has not a political or a popular share in it previously, before thinking whether the nomination through which the formula was settled and the subsequent steps contribute or complicate the task of the arrival of the concerned candidate to presidency.

The time of the pretence of being clever has ended because the two initiatives have collided with the impasse wall, and the one who thought that their stay by the achieved thrust for each of them will lead to another thing is deluded because the thrust of one of them will disable the other. It is not an exaggeration to say that the nomination of Geagea by Al-Hariri a year and a half ago was not valid to disable the arrival of Aoun as his electing of Franjieh, In return it is not possible to say that the nomination of Franjieh becomes disrupted except for the nomination of Aoun by Geagea

The return to politics means the return to the bases of the Eighth and the Fourteenth of March,  the political alignment of the two teams and the sufficiency of gains and losses which resulted from the tricks of pretending to be clever even if they were honest initiatives. We are not in the court of intentions but in front of  blockade facts that say who can ask Franjieh to withdraw in  favor of Aoun while he has a consideration shows that any facilitation for the nomination of Aoun by Geagea at the  electoral session will prove the failure of the nomination of gaining the absolute majority, even if Franjieh remained abandoned ten sessions because at the eleventh session he will own this majority, and who can ask  Aoun to withdraw in favor of Franjieh while holding in one hand  the Christian semi consensus  paper after getting the nomination of Geagea and on the other hand the irresistible paper of strength which is represented by the unlimited support of Hezbollah. The two papers are enough to say there will be no presidency till the terms of consensus get matured on electing Aoun as a president by uncontested election.

The return to politics means that the team of Eighth of March takes the initiative to hold a meeting  at the level of its participated team at the sessions of the national dialogue including the former Ministers Faisal Karami and Abdul Rahim Morad, to discuss the outcomes of the two initiatives at the level of the difficulty on one hand and the political rules which they prove on the other hand at their forefronts the affiliation of the forthcoming president to the team of the Eighth of March in return of an implicit admission of the affiliation of the Prime Minister to the team of the Fourteenth of March. The second outcome is the dynamism which the understanding between Aoun and Geagea in the parliamentary elections imposes  a thrust for each of the Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri and the Deputy Walid Jumblatt to think seriously in the law of the parliamentary elections that depends on relativity, after the  intermingling of the circuits in which they have an influence accompanied with a Christian importance had turned from a blessing to a curse, and instead of getting the additional profits which are represented by reserving a ratio in the Christian seats for each one of them, the concern of the danger of losing seats that belong to their sectarian bases by the influence of the Christian voting becomes the need, so there is no way to avoid this but by the relativity representation which eliminates the opportunities of tampering with the electoral  results by weighing one of the fractious sectarian voting scale by another sectarian  voting.

The forces of the Eighth of March can stem from what has happened to address the opposite bank by the call to return to politics and the alignment as a team that receives the initiative and replies to it by negotiation, the content of this initiative is first, any presidential blockade cannot be  affected by the initiatives which come from outside the cohesion of the two opposites teams, because it cannot ensure the necessary quorum for electing a president that needs the convergence of the two opposite teams in order to be achieved. Second, the negotiation on the presidential issue is a negotiation that starts from the summary of the nominations of the main teams in the Fourteenth of March which is the admission that the president must belong to the team of the Eighth of March and the Prime Minister must belong to the team of the Fourteenth of March.

The forces of the Eighth of March start saying that the accomplishment of the understanding on the parliamentary elections law is inseparable of the presidential understanding, so they suggest and activate the work of the parliamentary committee in parallel with the presidential negotiation to achieve the simultaneous achievement of the two understandings.

Depending on these two bases the forces of the Eighth of March ask their opponent and their partner in the team of the Fourteenth of March do you want to test the rule that each team chooses its candidate itself and the other team must accept him? In this case the team of the Eighth of March will agree and the at the forefront of this unanimity the Deputy Suleiman Franjieh that the candidate is the General Michael Aoun, and the team of the Fourteenth of March has to accept in return its right to nominate whoever it wants for the presidency of the government even if the Minister was Ashraf Rifi or the Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri or the Prime Minister Al-Sionora or any of its statesmen.

On that basis the forces of the Eighth of March continue, if the right of choosing the president was not exclusively to the team of the Eighth of March, so it has to nominate two candidates consecutively, so it will nominate surely the known candidates who each one of them has a main support of the team of the Fourteenth of March, they are the General Aoun and the Deputy Suleiman Franjieh. Here the forces of the Fourteenth of March have to accept in return the right of the forces of the Eighth of March of choosing two candidates for the presidency of the government and choose what they find appropriate. It is logic that it is known implicitly that the acceptance of the team of the Eighth of March to choose the Prime Minister Al-Hariri for heading the government will be conditioned by the acceptance of the forces of the Fourteenth of March the nomination of the General Aoun as a support of this choice which constitutes the first choice of the forces of the Eighth of March.

The forces of the Eighth of March say  that the choice of the forces of the Fourteenth of March for any candidate will ensure guarantees for the candidate who has to leave the presidential marathon which the forces of the Fourteenth of March bears the responsibility of surrounding him with the complications of the nomination, either the nomination of Franjieh by Saad Al-Hariri who has complicated the presidential choices of Aoun or the nomination of Aoun by Geagea who has complicated the presidential choices of Franjieh. The required withdrawal of the candidate must be covered by a national consensus that grants him guarantees and alternative gains. In this case the exchange of the withdrawal of Aoun is the acceptance of amending the national law of defense in a way that allows the appointment of the commander from the reservists,  thus to accept the retired Brigadier Shamel Roukoz as a commander of the army, and the pledge of the obtainment of the Free Patriotic Movement half of the ministerial Christian seats in the government including the Ministry of Finance for the Minister Gebran Bassil, while in exchange of the withdrawal of Deputy Franjieh it must be pledged of giving its movement the quarter Christian ministerial representation including the sovereign portfolio that will be the share of the Maronites..

The forces of the Eighth of March can restore through this initiative the unit of their ranks. It is impossible for any of their presidential candidates to feel of injustice or abandoned in this case, because  they have granted each one of them a suitable true luck that makes the choice of the opposite team a weighing factor between them, with the difficulty of pre-anticipating of the nature of this weighing. To ensure the decent dealing out of the confidence of their candidates they alienate them from the negotiation and substitute them with a delegation that represents the participated parties and headed by the Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri,

The forces of the Fourteenth of March receive the initiative, they have to go back to restore their ranks, to study well and to choose or to leave the initiative in their playground till it is the time for the international and regional equations for producing the presidency.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh.