Lebanonwire.com | Lebanon opposition accused of vote-buying ahead of final elections

Top Banner

June 17, 2005

Lebanon opposition accused of vote-buying ahead of final elections

RABIEH, Lebanon - Christian firebrand Michel Aoun accused Lebanon's main opposition alliance of vote-buying Friday as politicking intensified ahead of the decisive final round of parliamentary elections.

"During the election, those people have been buying consciences," Aoun said, referring to the opposition alliance of Sunni leader Saad Hariri, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and the Lebanese Forces movement of jailed former Christian warlord Samir Geagea.

"How could I say that someone who is corrupting consciences, who is violating them with money, is going to fight against graft when he is the corrupter-in-chief?"

Aoun, who has formed an unlikely alliance with pro-Syrian politicians despite being driven into exile for 14 years by Damascus, rejected charges that Syrian intelligence officers had remained in Lebanon after April's troop pullout and were interfering in the elections.

"The Syrian presence is a rumour," said Aoun, who scored a dramatic political comeback in the third round of the elections last Sunday, winning 21 seats in a blow for anti-Syrian rivals.

He said if Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh was right in saying Syrian agents were intimidating voters, then he ought to step down for failing in his duty to ensure a free and fair election.

"The interior minister pretends some Syrian officers are interfering in the elections. He has to resign because his duty is to arrest them and send them to trial," Aoun said in English.

"His duty is not to send to (UN envoy Terje Roed-) Larsen and (US President George W.) Bush and (Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice to say officers are here. We have to stop that and assume our responsibilities."

Aoun defended his alliance with the pro-Syrian Christian families of Defence Minister Elias Murr and former interior minister Suleiman Franjieh, arguing that all politicans who had remained in Lebanon during the 15 years of Syrian domination had been forced to make accommodations with Damascus.

"All Lebanese in power over the past 15 years were Syria's collaborators, starting with Hariri.

"Murr and Franjieh are no more pro-Syrian than Hariri or Jumblatt, who used to see himself as Damascus's gate-keeper.

"I am the only politican in this country who didn't collaborate with the Syrians," he said, referring to his years in exile in France.

Aoun said any government he headed would seek to maintain "balanced" relations with Syria but would insist on its own track in the Middle East peace process after years of seeing its intertests subordinated to those of its larger neighbour.

"We are separate countries now. We don't have the same process," said Aoun.

"But we maintain our support to Syria to recover the Golan Heights and we maintain our support to the Palestinians to have their own country."

With 28 seats up for grabs, Sunday's vote in the north will be decisive for the main opposition bloc's ambition to win control of parliament and campaign workers from both sides were out in force.

In the first three rounds, the bloc won 46 seats against 33 for the pro-Syrian Shiite alliance of Amal and Hezbollah and 21 for Aoun.

In the main northern city of Tripoli, Aoun also allied himself with a campaigner for the rights of the handicapped who took to the streets in his wheelchair Friday to woo the undecided.

"Elections are the best way of getting the message across and parliament the place to put forward legislation protecting the rights of the disabled," said Nawaf Kabbara, 52, who lost the use of his legs in a road traffic accident 25 years ago and set up Lebanon's first advocacy group in 1998.