The head of the "Lebanese Forces" party, Samir Geagea, stated that those claiming they are attending the legislative session on Tuesday to avoid a vacancy in municipal and electoral positions, particularly the Resistance Party blocs and the "Free Patriotic Movement," are merely making "false claims." He emphasized that Prime Minister Najib Mikati has called for a government meeting on Tuesday with an agenda item to secure the necessary funding to conduct the elections, thus ensuring the budget for this obligation is provided, and there is no reason to prevent it from taking place on schedule.
Geagea noted in a statement that the Minister of Interior has repeatedly confirmed the administrative and logistical readiness of his ministry. He added that the Resistance Party blocs and the "Free Patriotic Movement" have obstructed the electoral process for municipal elections recently with flimsy excuses, until they were forced to "fabricate" a legislative session on the same day that the necessary funding is to be allocated for these elections, with the sole aim of "trying to thwart the provision of the required budget" for this obligation and subsequently "derailing it."
This action stems from their lack of confidence in the outcomes that the electoral process will yield. The media and communications committee of the "Free Patriotic Movement" responded by saying that "it's good that the Forces have condensed the entire issue of the municipal and electoral elections into whom to believe, the Minister of Interior or the Movement," indicating that the answer lies in the statement of MP George Adwan after the last parliamentary committees meeting, in which he placed the responsibility for not holding the municipal elections on the government.
The statement from the Movement remarked, "Who should we believe, Geagea or Adwan? The truth is that the answer is with every MP who attended the joint committees, every governor, deputy governor, judge, teacher, civil registry officer, and employee in the judicial registry." The answer is in the clear constitutional text and the resigned government, and in the attendance of the Forces at seven legislative sessions during the presidential vacancy between 2014 and 2016, approving 124 laws. Here lies the credibility and the difference between populism and realism, between misleading and truth, and between the Forces and the Movement.
