After six years at the head of a nation in crisis, the Christian leader leaves his seat vacant to the presidency.
by
A human tide was formed on the heights of Baabda, Sunday October 30 in the morning, to accompany Michel Aoun in his last hours at the presidential palace. Very weakened, the 89 -year -old Lebanese Christian general delivered his last speech to the hard core of his supporters, adorned with the orange colors of his party, the free patriotic current (CPL). The speech recalls the harangues of its beginnings, without passion. To those who still see him as a providential man, he asserted this “victory” torn off a few days before the end of his sex year – an agreement on the delimitation of the maritime border with Israel -, his “gift to the Lebanese”. The rest is only a litany of accusations against his political adversaries to whom he attributes the failures that have marked his presidency.
Arrived in power in 2016 by promising to be a “strong president”, unifying and reformer, he went as a man honored by a majority of Lebanese. Never had a mandate have been so marked by crises: from the October 2019 uprising to the Pandemic of Covid-19, from the deadly explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 to economic and financial collapse. However, he locked himself in denial, going so far as to advise the unhappy Lebanese to “leave”. Flanked out of his son -in -law Gebran Bassil in “President of the Shadow”, he exercised a divisive presidency, without government half of the time. He leaves behind an bloodless country, crossed by deep divisions, and where a new institutional crisis is looming with the vacancy that opens up to the presidency.
“He accessed the haloed power of the nation’s savior’s myth, under the slogan of change and reform, but turned out to be a weak president, unable to carry out his ambitions, says Karim Bitar, Director of the Department of Political Science at Saint-Joseph University of Beirut. He advocated a new way of doing politics and defended the principle of a civil status. He found himself a community leader, close to the Extreme Christian right, ally of Hezbollah. “
forced exile in France
The Aoun myth was forged during the first stay in Baabda of this former commander -in -chief of the army, having taken the lead of a military government in 1988. After a fratricidal war in the Christian camp, he launched A “liberation war” against the Syrian presence, which failed in the fall of 1990. His fiery speeches galvanize the Christian crowds which experience resentment against militias and foreign interference. Aounism was born. “It is a basic and anti-elitarian populism, close to bakers, which pays in the cult of the chief”, analyzes Joseph Bahout, director of the Issam Farès Institute within the American University of Beirut.
You have 63.77% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.