Lebanese Communist Party Secretary General Hanna Gharib Statement
In light of international and regional agreements, orchestrated by Macron’s France, on the centennial of the French mandate over Lebanon, the different regime powers hurried to celebrate their subordination. They cemented this subordination, in practice, by nominating the prime minister-designate with unprecedented haste, as they always have when they transition from one guardianship to the next, consolidating Lebanon’s political status under direct foreign guardianship. All parties: so-called sovereignty, neutrality, rejection parties and others, made concessions on their long lists of conditions, all for the sake of foreign guardians, without making a single concession or working on any initiative for the Lebanese protesters, who have been on the streets since October 17th. They all hurried to revive their previous practices of dividing power among themselves on sectarian and nepotistic bases, while the Lebanese still mourn those killed by the Beirut Port explosion/crime, for which the murderous sectarian regime is fully and directly responsible.
The October 17 Uprising and Lebanese people in the streets, across the regions of Lebanon and its capital, broke the monopoly over popular representation claimed by regime parties in power. They also withdrew popular legitimacy from both the PM Hariri and PM Diab governments successively, which collapsed without any popular support to protect them. Regime parties do not want to acknowledge the people of Lebanon, they see the new government only as an opportunity to regroup, gather their strengths, and put their differences aside to pounce on the people yet again, this time with complete international support. Macron did not come to listen to the Lebanese people, as their rosy promises claim, but rather to save the dying regime and reshape it to launch Lebanon’s second centennial, based on the same rules used in the first one: murderous sectarian balances and a regime reliant on relations of foreign dependence and submission. The same rules that historically undermined the building of a state, stole the Lebanese people’s wealth, resources and labor, and forced the Lebanese to move overseas, seeking life. Macron – still refusing to release political activist Georges Abdallah, despite completing his sentence, and for whom we demand immediate release – came to implement international and regional agreements, and to actually stand by regime parties and to reorganize their internal affairs, after their failure to regenerate an internal settlement was proven.
The Lebanese Communist Party warns that the path taken to reform the upcoming government will lead to a far worse and more incompetant government than the previous ones, because such a government will be one in direct confrontation with the Lebanese people and its uprising. It will give regime parties the opportunity to use Lebanon’s need for assistance and foreign loans (whether from the IMF, CEDRE conference, or other sources) in order to cement the old/new version of the regime of dependence. It is an attempt to impose political and economic conditions related to the Deal of the Century, and to implement a project of impoverishment, starvation, displacement, and pillaging of public funds, previously proposed by the Hariri Cabinet, disguised as the “reform project”, then adopted by the Diab Cabinet, without any of them managing to implement it. Today, foreign powers are exerting pressure and regime parties are agreeing amongst each other to implement the articles of this project as a condition to obtain loans. Such conditions include, but are not limited to, the liberalization of the exchange rate, discontinuing the subsidization of basic commodities, increasing indirect taxes and basic public services fees, and the sale of the remnants of public institutions to banks and local and foreign private sectors.
The forces of change are the only forces capable of protecting the Lebanese from the aggression of the regime and its backers. Popular legitimacy, achieved by the glorious popular uprising, now constitutes a political force that cannot be ignored, internally or externally. Our country cannot be saved without this force playing a vital role in the process of radical change required for this transitional phase. Therefore, we call on all uprising forces and groups in agreement on a proposed transitional government with legislative powers formed from constituents not affiliated with the regime to meet, regroup, and unify their efforts to face internal and international “agreements” projects promoted by the national/international unity government, and take the streets again.
Forces of change should not converge for opposition purposes only, but should also be established based on an alternative comprehensive political state-building project, capable of saving the Lebanese from their political and economic crisis.
This actually means imposing the burden of losses on those who accumulated immense wealth in previous decades and pillaged public and private funds, to defend the rights of the Lebanese to comprehensive healthcare coverage – particularly now to face the rapid spread of Covid-19 – and to free and quality education, public transport, social housing, investment of wasted funds in building the basis of a productive national economy, and the launch of radical political reform process. This process should include generating the base upon which a civil, democratic and secular state can be built, implementing a proportional non-sectarian electoral law, civil personal status laws, and independent judicial system.
Beirut, August 31, 2020