“Since 2016, we have not had the courage, we have not had the knees, I do not want to use another term, to say no to Hezbollah”, affirms Marwan Hamadé, resigning deputy from the block of Walid Joumblatt and candidate for the May 15 elections, in this new episode of our special legislative podcast “Aux Urnes citoyen”.
The former minister believes that it is necessary to “hold firm” against the formation of Hassan Nasrallah “whatever the cost” and considers that the institutional vacuum is preferable to “Hezbollah’s stranglehold on the state” .
In this interview, our seventh guest comes back at length on the reasons, according to him, which led to the collapse of Lebanon, on the strategy to be implemented against the party of God and on the relationship he maintains with the movement of protest of October 17, 2019, which oscillate between attraction and repulsion.
“I am ready to give everything to this youth who demonstrated,” he said while sharply criticizing the flagship slogan of the October 17 uprising, the “Kellon yaane kellon” (All that means all).
While he calls for an alliance between the traditional forces hostile to Hezbollah and the new movements emerging from civil society, he criticizes the latter for not sufficiently highlighting the “sovereigntist banner” and for “not knowing the history of the country”. “They thought that the history of Lebanon began on October 17. It’s not true! he retorts, recalling that his generation and those that followed suffered from the Syrian occupation and the rise of Hezbollah. “We didn’t murder anyone. We have been assassinated,” he said, reaffirming his desire to unite against the Shiite party.
The former minister, a key figure in the Hariri years, also dismisses criticism of the economic model put in place during this period. “No one has driven a nail since the assassination of Rafic Hariri,” he says. Most economists believe that the economic and financial crisis currently affecting Lebanon has its origins in part in the policies put in place by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in the aftermath of the civil war.
As part of this podcast, the first of L’Orient-Le Jour, candidates from civil society and traditional parties confront their program with our questions. Our bias is to go in depth, to explore the programs, the strategies of the different interlocutors. Always with the same rule: neither complacency nor aggressiveness.
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“Since 2016, we haven’t had the courage, we haven’t had the knees, I don’t want to use another term, to say no to Hezbollah,” says Marwan Hamadé, a resigning MP from Walid Joumblatt’s bloc and candidate for the May 15 elections, in this new episode of our special legislative podcast “Aux Urnes citoyen”. The former minister believes he is…
