Gemayel tries to make peace with Armenians

Hizbullah showed support for the Armenian community on Wednesday as former President Amin Gemayel attempted to control the damage of his weekend comments that angered many Armenians. Gemayel Wednesday visited Armenian Catholicos Bishop Aram I Keshishian at his summer residence in Bikfaya.
The Catholicos called for a return of "conviviality and openness" in the Metn following the by-election. Banners of Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader MP Michel Aoun have been seen side-by-side with Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah around Bourj Hammoud following Aoun's electoral victory. Speaking to reporters after his meeting, Gemayel stressed his firm political, economic, social and cultural bonds with the Armenian community, which he said is dear to his heart. The former president pointed to a long and shared history of joint struggle between Lebanese Armenians and his Phalange Party.
"Let us not forget that the memorial to Armenian martyrs in Bikfaya is right next to the statue of [Phalange Party founder, the late] Sheikh Pierre," Gemayel said, rejecting accusations that anything he said was improper or offensive to the Armenian community. "Some people confused what I said with what others said, this is not my problem."
Gemayel had on Sunday accused his opponents of vote rigging during the polls and singled out the predominantly Armenian suburb of Bourj Hammoud. Gemayel said Wednesday that he was clear in pointing to certain irregularities and errors that occurred at polling stations in Bourj Hammoud, adding that a formal complaint had been filed at the local police stations regarding these irregularities. Tashnag Party MP Hagop Pakradounian, clarified on Wednesday that a criminal law suit to be filed by Armenian deputies is not directed against Gemayel but only against March 14 politician Gabriel Murr for comments that he made. Pakradounian on Wednesday received a Hizbullah delegation at Tashnag Party headquarters in Bourj Hammoud headed by politburo member Ghaleb Abou Zeinab.
Pakradounian told reporters after the meeting that Gemayel's visit to the Catholicos was a good move, and welcomed all initiatives aimed at clearing the air. Abou Zeinab said after the meeting that he hoped what was said Sunday by some members of the majority was just "a slip of the tongue in a moment of anger," adding that no one has the right to question the national identity of any Lebanese. Abou Zeinab expressed apprehension at certain political figures' comments, which he said showed that the Lebanese have not learned from past tragedies, which should prompt them to fortify national unity and reject political racism. "The Armenians deserve the right to make their own political choices, because they are not an isolated group as some would like to portray them to be. Every political party has the right to choose a political path, this is democracy," Abou Zeinab said.
The Loyalty to the Resistance bloc on Wednesday expressed regret over the decline in the standard of political debate, as well as the racism and misrepresentation of the facts committed by the ruling majority whenever anyone disagrees with them. The comments came in a statement issued following a meeting of the bloc on Wednesday chaired by MP Mohammad Raad. The bloc called on the ruling majority to "deal realistically" with the wide popular support enjoyed by the FPM. Baalbek-Hermel MP Nader Sukkar, speaking to the Lebanese News Agency Wednesday, decried what he called a new political rhetoric that has begun to classify Christians, and warned against such practice. He said the split in the Christian vote and their distribution is political, not religious.
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Source: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article....ticle_id=84442
Lebanon polls: Armenians back pro-Syrian candidate to victory

Bikfaya - Camille Khoury, the candidate backed by opposition leader Gen. Michel Aoun beat by a narrow margin former President Amin Gemayel in the crucial Metn by-election, but the anti-Syrian runner reaped a vast majority of the Maronite vote.
Gemayel, a prominent leader of the pro-government ruling majority, had been vying to replace his son Pierre Gemayel who was killed last November in one of a series of attacks blamed by the majority on Syria. Damascus has rejected the accusations. Khoury won 39,534 votes, against 39,116 votes for Gemayel, whose representative has lodged a "complaint on the results," Interior Minister Hassan Sabaa said in a press conference before dawn Monday. He gave no other details.
Both sides declared they had won a few hours after the polls closed Sunday. The daily An Nahar on Monday said the Armenian community in Lebanon played a key role in the Metn by-election victory. It said that while Khoury obtained 8,400 Armenian votes, Gemayel got only 1,600. The Armenian vote shocked the Lebanese community, since the Armenians traditionally vote for the ruling majority. Many of the Armenians immigrated to Lebanon from Syria. The fact that the Armenians voted for a candidate that is strongly allied with the pro-Syrian Hezbollah militants was the big surprise of the by-election.
Several Lebanese newspapers on Monday said that although Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement emerged the winner in the weekend poll, the party had nonetheless been weakened politically as it only clinched a narrow victory, thanks only to the Armenian vote. The pro-government French daily L'Orient Le Jour said that had it not been for the support of the Armenian community in one district, where Gemayel alleged vote-rigging, Aoun's party would have been xxxxxled in the polls.
The other surprising factor in Khoury's victory is the vote of the the naturalized Syrian- Lebanese. They crossed the border from Syria to vote for Hezbollah's Nasrallah, but when told by reporters Nasrallah is not running , they said they will then vote for Aoun. It was Michel Murr that naturalized the Syrian -Lebanese and allocated them to his Metn constituency and they came to pay him back. Sabaa earlier told reporters that the ruling majority candidate, Mohammed al-Amin Itani, had won as expected a landslide victory in another by-election which was also held on Sunday in Beirut. The by-elections were held to replace two anti-Syrian lawmakers killed in attacks blamed by the anti-Syrian March 14 majority on former powerbroker Damascus, which supports the Hezbollah -led opposition.
The two murdered MPs were Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian who was gunned down in a Beirut suburb on November 21, 2006, and Sunni Muslim Walid Eido, who was killed in a car bombing in Beirut on June 13. After the end of the by-elections, the two camps immediately called for self-restraint, as hundreds of supporters from both sides gathered in public squares amid a heavy deployment of army and security forces backed by armored vehicles. One person was slightly injured by youths throwing stones in Beirut's northern suburb of Jdeideh where supporters of the two camps had gathered in the same public square, an AFP photographer witnessed. In a televised speech Aoun had announced Khoury's victory over Gemayel, and appealed for calm. But Gemayel had refused to admit defeat until official results were announced and demanded a rerun of the vote in one mainly Armenian region where he claimed voter fraud.
"We want elections to be repeated in the Burj Hammoud district," Gemayel told his supporters gathered in his hometown of Bikfaya. He said there were reports from that area of people not living there or deceased casting votes as well as irregularities with voting cards. The Metn by-election has deeply split Lebanon's Christians ahead of polls to elect a new head of state. The outcome of the poll is expected to set the tone for presidential elections due to be held in September. Traditionally, the president is chosen from the Maronite Christian community in Lebanon. "The legend of Michel Aoun as the sole Christian leader has crumbled," Walid Jumblatt, a prominent leader of the ruling majority, told Lebanese television.
"Amin Gemayel has won the political battle. Michel Aoun has fallen politically despite all his alliances," he said. Following the by-elections, parliament's challenge will still be to elect a new president to succeed pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud by a November 25 deadline. While the majority controls enough seats to elect a president, it needs the opposition to take part for the two-thirds quorum required for parliament to convene. The by-elections came amid heightened political and security tensions in the deeply divided country as a deadly showdown between the army and Islamist extremists in the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-bared continues to rage after 11 weeks.
Source: http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/20..._polls_a_1.php
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