Beirut: Christian deputies on 'retreat' with patriarch to break presidential deadlock

Card. Raï in the middle of Holy Week will welcome Christian MPs to Harissa. But from the Vatican and in public opinion the expectations are modest. Among the bishops there is the fear of a loss of prestige and authority for the Maronite primate in the event of failure. The resumption of relations between Tehran and Riyadh could facilitate consensus around a name.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - The Maronite Patriarch has invited all Christian MPs to a moment of "spiritual retreat" during Holy Week in an effort to ublock the impasse surrounding the Presidential elections. On the other hand, the political expectations raised by such a meeting are modest, at least this is the widespread opinion in Vatican and public opinion circles. 

After several weeks of contacts between the parties, the Maronite Patriarch finally found the best way to bring the 64 Christian deputies together under his aegis: by summoning them for a 'spiritual retreat' of a few hours. He announced this on the feast of St Joseph, last Sunday. The 'retreat' will take place in the pilgrims' hostel in Bethania (Harissa), next 5 April, in the Holy Week plan. 

In his homily at St Joseph's Mass, Card. Beshara Raï referred explicitly to today's deadlocked presidential election, calling for an "honest and impartial dialogue" and "mutual listening, careful discernment of the decision to be taken, without a partisan opinion being forcibly imposed and without hidden calculations or double motives". 

Going beyond the religious element with which the meeting appears to be cloaked, its political objective is immediately apparent: to unblock the presidential election. The head of the Maronite Church has made it a moral obligation to give a positive response to his initiative, if only to bar any possibility of rejecting the invitation immediately after receiving a refusal from the Lebanese Forces to start an intra-Maronite dialogue in Bkerké.

And the stratagem seems to have succeeded because the Lebanese Forces, whose leader Samir Geagea has so far refused any meeting with Gebral Bassil, accusing him of betraying the party's trust, confirmed the presence of their deputies at the Harissa meeting, along with the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement.

For his part, the son-in-law of former President Michel Aoun, welcomed the initiative without hesitation. The Kataëb and Michel Mouawad's Renewal bloc also responded positively. The Christian members of the protest were left free to accept or decline the invitation. However, one of them, Najat Saliba, has already declared that she will not lend herself 'to these games from another era'.

On the other hand, the Maronite patriarch's initiative raises more than one concern on Hezbollah's side. The Shia formation insists, together with the Amal movement, on having its candidate, Sleiman Frangié, elected, although this nomination comes up against the vetoes of the two big Christian blocs in the House: the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement, as well as the hostility of the Sunni 'big voter' on the Lebanese scene: Saudi Arabia. 

Speaking on behalf of the pro-Iranian formation, Sheikh Ahmad Kabalan recalled that Hezbollah is in favour of 'a national compromise' provided it can pass 'through parliament'. The Party of God is doing the impossible - unsuccessfully for the moment - to gather around its candidate the 65 votes that would ensure his election in the second round of voting. On this point it can count on a weighty argument: the vote of the Shia community, without whose support any presidential candidate would be considered non-consensual.

On the other hand, in the name of the same principle of mutual consensus, the SPP (Progressive Socialists) of Druze leader Walid Joumblatt has already said that it only wants to vote for a president elected in the first round with a two-thirds majority (equal to 86 MPs). In other words, a candidate certainly not forcibly imposed on the two major Christian formations who can at least benefit from the support of one of them.

Will the patriarchal initiative open Baabda's way to a consensus candidate? 'It is too much to hope for,' assures a former Maronite deputy, recalling that Patriarch Raï, after proving neutral towards the candidatures of Sleiman Frangié and Michel Mouawad, is looking for 'a third way'.

Regional dynamics are also moving in this direction, after the agreement reached a dozen days ago to restore diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. An event that, in the eyes of some observers, would be able to facilitate a political consensus around the future head of state.

But because of the deep divisions between the two major political camps, the expectations raised by such a meeting must remain moderate. 'A crisis as serious as the one in Lebanon,' says a diplomatic source close to the Vatican on condition of anonymity, 'will not be resolved with a meeting of a spiritual nature.

The same relative scepticism is expressed by a Maronite bishop, who says he is "worried" about the complex logistics of the meeting on 5 April, and fears that its failure and the defection of some Orthodox deputies could reflect badly on "the moral authority of the patriarch".