Geagea Says Hizbullah 'Not Serious' in Backing Aoun, Vows to Keep Pressing for General's Election

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea pledged Tuesday to keep pressing for the election as president of his new ally, Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun, while noting that the latter's other key ally, Hizbullah, is “not serious” in its support for Aoun's presidential bid.

“The Syrian hegemony has left but 'the angels of the hegemony era' are still controlling state institutions, seeing as we have been without a president for two years and four months now. The presidency is currently in captivity and we are sparing no effort to secure its release,” Geagea told MTV in a phone interview marking 11 years since his release from prison.

“The strategic problem in the presidential issue is that Iran wants vacuum because it serves its strategic calculations,” the LF chief added.

Asked about his talks over the presidency with al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri and Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat, Geagea said his endeavor “has not ended.”

“We have not lost hope and the deliberations are still ongoing. A lot of parties now share us our viewpoint, so why should we wait any longer?” he added.

Geagea also noted that “persuading ex-PM Hariri” of Aoun's nomination would be an “important” step, adding that “Hizbullah is not serious about endorsing General Michel Aoun's bid.”

“The needed quorum and parliamentary majority” for Aoun's election can be secured today if Hizbullah is serious in its support, Geagea pointed out.

During a meeting with LF expats in Maarab earlier in the day, the LF leader had announced that “Iran is blocking the presidential vote in Lebanon through Hizbullah.”

“It is doing so because it wants a price for allowing the presidential election to be held in Lebanon. It believes that the Gulf countries and the West have major interests in Lebanon, so it wants the West and the Gulf states to accept that Bashar Assad stay in power in Syria in return for releasing the presidency from its captivity in Lebanon,” Geagea explained.

“But of course no one accepted this proposal,” he added.

“We wanted to end the captivity of the presidency so we had two choices – persuading Hizbullah and Iran of ending the captivity, which would not have been possible due to Iran's strategic calculations, or endorsing General Aoun for the presidency in order to break the deadlock and put Iran and Hizbullah in a dilemma,” Geagea clarified, referring to his surprise endorsement of Aoun in January.

“This choice was further prompted by (Hariri's) nomination of MP Suleiman Franjieh,” he added.

“That's why we preferred to support Aoun, the thing that reshuffled and changed the equations in Lebanon, and we will continue our pressure for securing the needed quorum for Aoun's elections as president,” Geagea vowed.

Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum.

Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah.

The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.