Buried Hrawi, the president who requested Syria's fraternal help
He is held to be responsible for endorsing the Syrian occupation, but anyhow he is recognized for his commitment to unifying the country.
Beirut (AsiaNews) Saluted with 21 canon shots, the ex-Lebanese president Elias Hrawi, who died on Friday, was buried yesterday in his native place of Zahle in Bekaa. A controversial figure, accused of having welcomed Syrian domination in a telegram, Assad praised his "sincerity" in ties with Damascus but spoken of by Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir as one who knew how to reunite the country "at the cost of life", and who put a stop to the civil war.
A Maronite Christian, Hrawi was born on 3 September 1926 to a family with 19 children. He himself fathered five children. An MP since 1972, he attained the post of Head of State after the assassination of President Rene Mouawad in 1989, while all-out civil war was raging. He would stay in this post until 1998. An author of the Taeff accords that put an end to the civil war, in 1990, he invoked Syrian intervention as an "Arab force of support" and in 1991, he signed a "treaty of brotherhood, coordination and collaboration" with Damascus, in effect endorsing the presence of the Syrian army, which stayed in the country of the Cedars until 2005.
Hrawi was recalled by Ghassan Tueini, in the editorial of An Nahar, as "the President of the Republican Challenge". The father of Gebran Tueini, the MP killed on 12 July last year, described Hrawi as "the president who was elected without the presence of a Republic, without a presidential palace, even without a real Constitution", and who, "when faced with this reality, was forced to invent powers". Tueini concluded that Elias Hrawi "received the heavy task from an assassinated president, and he will be recalled as the president who could confront the challenge of the absence of a Republic with the foundation of a Republic, with its presidential palace reconstructed, a unified army and Applied Constitutions".
Talking to AsiaNews about President Hrawi, the journalist Abib Chlouk, said that, in spite of everything, the man remained in the mind and history of Lebanon. He also recalled that in his autobiography, "The Conscience of Lebanon", Hrawi himself upheld "the need to establish real and reciprocal ties between Lebanon and Syria, to be able to rebuild lasting peace between the two countries".
In the church of St George, where the funeral was held, Mgr Youssef Tawk, secretary of the Assembly of Maronite Bishops, read the funeral oration of Patriarch Sfeir, who is in the USA for a pastoral visit. The oration recalled the "dramatic circumstances" in which the election of Hrawi to the presidency of the Republic came about, as well as the positive fact that "his obsession was to unite Lebanon and the State".
At the service, alongside Hrawi's successor, current president Emile Lahoud, and representatives of Lebanon's institutions and political circles, there were many delegates of heads of State. Among them was the Syrian minister for presidential affairs, Ghassan al-Lahham, the first leader of Damascus to enter Lebanon since the withdrawal of Syrian troops in April 2005. He expressed the "deep sorrow" of President Assad.
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