The head of the Free Patriotic Movement, MP Gebran Bassil, stressed in a speech he delivered during a dinner held by the Belgium Authority in Brussels that “we fought a real battle to give you rights and we approved them in the Lebanese Parliament in 2017 and today,” adding: “A few months before the electoral deadline, there are those who want to cancel this law and delete these seats, leaving you with one question: What do we do next May?”
He continued: There are questions such as: Should we register our names or not? Do we vote in Lebanon or do we vote at the consulate? What should we do? All of this happens at a time when we have given you all the options to do what you want according to the law.
He explained: Whoever wants to vote in Lebanon can elect the representative who represents him in his constituency, and whoever wants to elect the representative who represents him in his country can register and elect in the expansion.
Bassil confirmed: “They started lying to you to tell you that we are depriving you of your rights to vote, and we are telling you that we are giving you the right to direct representation, whether in your district in Lebanon or in your district abroad, and we are giving you the right to vote and run for office.”
He added: “When they said that we are preventing you from obtaining your rights, we went to the end and said that we support the Lebanese choosing in the country of residence if he wants to vote for his representative in the country, let him vote, or if he wants to vote from the country in which he resides for the representative in his constituency in Lebanon, let him do so.”
He said: “The interest of expansion is more important than our political and electoral interest, and when we approved the law in 2017, we were aware that we did not have a majority in expansion, but we passed this law to give you your right, because whoever considers the interest of the country to be more important than his own interest is the one who deserves to work for his country and not for himself, for himself, for his country, and for his party, which benefits when the country grows, but when the country shrinks and declines, he goes with him.”
He said: “We came to talk to you about the truth, but they are putting you in this critical situation, as registration has been opened, and to this day you do not know what you can do to exercise your right. Rather, they are introducing laws to cancel your rights in battles for which we fought, and you were behind the demand for these rights.”
He added: “The right of the Lebanese to vote abroad is part of his participation in public life in Lebanon, and giving the Lebanese abroad the right to vote and run, which we sought to make widespread, is not enough. Hence the importance of completing the path of giving the Lebanese abroad their rights through a parliamentary bloc that represents them in the Lebanese parliament. Hence the idea of the Lebanese abroad obtaining direct representation, which we achieved for the first time in the history of Lebanon with the law that we passed in 2017.” Elections were held for the first time in 2018, and you were able to participate in them from abroad.
Bassil explained: For more than ten years, as Lebanese, you were not deprived of exercising your electoral right when you returned to Lebanon, but rather you were deprived of exercising it from outside Lebanon, and that is why we sought in the second phase to preserve this right by participating in the elections, and also through direct representation, so that you have a representative who represents you in the continent in which you are located.
Bassil stressed that “we gave you the right to run for the constituencies in which you reside,” adding: “Have you heard about the existence of a parliamentary bloc that submitted a law for Lebanese diaspora?” He added: “In the past, we brought together the Lebanese through the LDE, and that is why we decided to relaunch it with a conference that will be held on December 29 and 30 to relaunch this path.”
He continued: “Everyone is complaining today about the prices of airline tickets, and this is one of the thefts that the spread-out Lebanese people are exposed to, because it is not normal for the price of a flight ticket from Brussels to Beirut to be three times more expensive than the price of a ticket from Brussels to Cairo and to Damascus or elsewhere, because the plane is the same, the administration is the same, and the fuel is the same.” He pointed out, “This is an example, and if you had representatives for the deployment, we would not have been forced to talk about this issue, and you would have a bloc of six.” Representatives belong to all parties, and thus the entire parliament is demanding a reduction in the price of the travel ticket that takes you to Lebanon, because because of the prices, you and your families are deprived of going to Lebanon, and this is a simple example of what representatives of the deployment can do.”
Bassil said: “Imagine the Lebanese who immigrated in the late 1800s or the early 1900s and lost their nationality, and considering that some were no longer Lebanese, we had to pass a law giving them the right to regain their nationality, and some of them regained their nationality, and therefore these are Lebanese citizens who lost their nationality, but the Lebanese authority does not return it to them.”
He continued: “Imagine today if, after fifty years, your children lose Lebanese citizenship for the same reasons, and perhaps because one of them was forced to immigrate to a country and the embassy is far away, or because someone’s family did not register him and the years passed and he did not register.
He said: “As much as we want to live as “neighbors” and for their cause to be victorious, we will not prefer them over the Lebanese citizen.
Bassil considered that “it is natural that we are concerned with preserving the Lebanese identity by preserving the Lebanese in Lebanon, and for this reason we cannot visit any country outside Lebanon without speaking with officials in those countries about the issue of Lebanese identity, and this is what happened in our meetings that we held with the European officials that we met, because when we lose our identity, we lose ourselves and our homeland.”
Bassil stressed that “the homeland is not only the land but also the people, and he said: When we lose the people who emigrate, we lose the homeland and ourselves, and this is why Lebanon is in great danger, and this is the greatest danger because war may be difficult, but its effects and the economic crisis can be dealt with as well, but identity, culture, civilization, and heritage are all of these when we lose them, we lose the basic components of a people connected to their land.”
Bassil explained: “This is the great danger that we are alerted to, and that is why I realized the importance of the Lebanese deployment when I was Minister of Foreign Affairs.”
Bassil stressed that “we worked to connect the spread Lebanon with the resident Lebanon. Is one Lebanese embassy in Belgium or any other country sufficient for your expatriation?” He asked, “Which ambassador can cover a large country in which there are a million and a half Lebanese? And which consul can do that if there is not in every state and city a consul to be able to carry out the transactions that you should originally do while you are at home.”
Bassil stressed that “all of these matters are carried out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is concerned with the affairs of the Lebanese expansion, or by a parliamentary bloc, by acknowledging and imposing on the minister and the ministry of any party to which he belongs that this national plan is to take care of the Lebanese expansion, and it is not a matter of the “mood” of the minister or the party to which he belongs.”
Bassil stressed that “people’s affairs and concerns are not related to the political mood of a person, let us dismiss the consul who is not politically affiliated with us, or the economic attachés as well, as if the way of dealing with people who serve the state has become like dealing with the electricity file. He said: Work on factories or dams or even work on the road was stopped only because a political party was the one that did that, so you, the Lebanese, were deprived of electricity or water, as there became a party against Dams..
Bassil pointed out, “What is more sad is that we meet here while our country is being bombed and masses of fire are burning in it, and this does not concern a part of Lebanon or the people of Lebanon. When a spot in Lebanon is struck, all of Lebanon is struck and its sovereignty is violated. He added: We cannot be spectators in front of the scene of a part of the people being attacked, whether we disagree with them on politics or agree, but we will live with them and they cannot be killed while we applaud, because Tomorrow, if we are attacked, do we want him to applaud, or do we want him to stand by us in solidarity? Hence the importance that it was not recorded in the history of the Free Patriotic Movement that it sided with a foreigner against Lebanon. We will always agree with the Lebanese, even if he is wrong, against the foreigner, who could be a Syrian or an Israeli, without likening them to each other, as we are well aware of who is the enemy and who is the neighbor.
Bassil touched on the topic of October 17, noting that “we wanted this to be a day for reforming Lebanon. He said: What appeared was that it was a day on which Lebanon was martyred and with it were martyred all the Lebanese whose money “flew.” The truth was revealed when the accusation became directed by countries from abroad towards a section of our people so that what happened in Lebanon happened and we entered into the crisis. He added: To this day, after six years, we have not been able to get out of it in the absence of political will. For financial and economic reform in Lebanon, and because 128 representatives receive their money from the Lebanese people, they did not pass a law to stop the smuggling of money abroad. Bassil said, “The Belgian judiciary has seized the property of “Lebanon’s first thief,” Riad Salameh, and the Lebanese judiciary to this day has not seized his property, but rather releases him on bail of 14 million dollars, and no one knows its source,” stressing that “the great theft happens when there is no Accountability for those who stole the country, and the country is deteriorating because we are not held accountable.”
Bassil pointed out that “we used to meet with you when we were in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we had several stops in Belgium, and the last time was when I came here in 2018, seven years were a long time. He said: You have a fundamental affiliation to Lebanon and you have loyalty to the country that hosted you. Today we saw in the embassy the Lebanese diversity that brings together the Lebanese of all sects, and this is the Lebanon that we love and want to preserve, which is represented by the Lebanese ambassador to Belgium.” Walid Abi Haidar, who represents Lebanon the best. Bassil added: I feel joy whenever I visit a country to meet the Lebanese there, and no matter what we say, Lebanon lives today through you, and it certainly would not have survived if they had not maintained their presence in it, so that there would be a land with a people on it, and Lebanon would not have survived, neither economically nor emotionally, had it not been for the assistance of the proliferation.
