Montreal, Quebec — On Tuesday, three Montreal organizations called on Canadian media and the Canadian government to look at the situation in Lebanon objectively. Tadamon! Montreal, Al Khadiya Association and the Council of Lebanese Canadian Organizations (COLCO) held a joint press conference explaining the situation in Beirut.
Speakers for the groups stressed that contrary to media coverage, the popular uprising is not a coup, but is an attempt to form a national unity government, which would accommodate different factions. Moreover, the protest is not a Hezbollah-only enterprise, with Hezbollah representing only a third of protesters.
“We hear about Hezbollah demonstrations, but Hezbollah makes up only a fraction of opposition forces. One of the major forces in the opposition coalition is the CPL which is a laic group largely supported by Christians,” said Ziad Najjar of COLCO.
The groups denounced Canada’s unambiguous support of the Siniora government, saying Canada should stay out of Lebanon’s internal politics and let Lebanon decide its own fate. May Hayder of Al Hidaya spoke of a double standard vis-à-vis Lebanon, comparing the movement in Lebanon to the Cedar Revolution and the Orange Revolution. “On Sunday the 10th…2 million people clogged central Beirut and all the roads and bridges that lead to it,” said Hayder. “Over 40 percent of the population was on the streets — much larger than the ones which toppled their governments in Georgia and Ukraine.”
Finally, Tadamon! Montreal made available a poll by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which indicated that 73.1% of the Lebanese population desire a national unity government.
Dmitri Marine blogs on Blogue North
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackYet again we hear the voices of some coalition of Lebanese Canadian telling us how we should view the situation in Lebanon and how our Canadian government should be reacting to it.
First and foremost this is a democratically elected government that has the support of the majority of the freely elected Members of Parliament; it was formed with a consensus and like any democracy in the world, government could not and should not be brought down in the streets but in parliament.
Without playing the number game, there is another portion of the Lebanese population that supports this government and this has been demonstrated many times over the last year. Here I like to remind everyone that those are the streets of Beirut and not those of Georgia were over thirty years of war has thought us that no one group can force there will on the rest of the populace.
Here are some quotes from within Lebanon:
-”Hezbollah’s actions definitely are not in the interests of Shiites nor of Lebanon,” says Sheikh Ali al-Amine, the Shiite mufti of the Jabal Amel district of south Lebanon.
-Sports and Youth Minister Ahmad Fatfat said “Lebanon was undergoing an attempted coup serving the interests of regional forces. We tell the opposition that you are not alone in this country … Parliament is the right place to settle political discords,” he said.
After the end of the Israeli offensive on Lebanon, in August of 2006, Syrian President Bashar Assad clearly said that the March 14 coalition is an Israeli product and should be toppled. The Syrian puppets in Lebanon got there marching orders.
Even though the claim is that the CPL is a part of this movement, it is a marginal participation and not the other way around; Hezbollah is still the major force behind these actions.
We believe that Hezbollah and its allies are trying to stage a coup d’etat against the Saniora government and are attempting to obstruct the formation of an international tribunal that would try ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s suspected assassins.
We urge our Canadian government to keep its support to the democratically elected government of Lebanon and to play a bigger role to stop the external interferences form countries such as Iran and Syria; this is truly a Lebanese matter and better left to the Lebanese people to solve.
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