One Year After Sit-In, Opposition Warns: Either Consensus and Partnership or Nonstop Action
Hundreds of opposition supporters rallied in downtown Beirut on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the Hizbullah-led sit-in that has sent 2,700 people unemployed and forced closure of 75 restaurants and coffee shops.
The protestors gathered in Riad Solh Square where the opposition, supported by Syria and Iran, has maintained a tent city outside the offices of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora.
They vowed to maintain their tent city for years if need be to force the resignation of Saniora”s majority government.
The demonstrators waved Lebanese flags as well as the banners of Hizbullah, Amal, the Free Patriotic Movement of Gen. Michel Aoun and a number of pro-Syrian parties.
“One year on the sit-in for national unity,” said one placard. “One year on, against monopoly,” read another.
The opposition wants a government of national unity installed in place of Saniora”s administration which has been dominated by foes of Damascus since six pro-Syrian ministers quit in November last year.
Hizbullah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan warned that the Opposition is ready to keep up its sit-in protest if the ruling March 14 coalition “went too far.”
“The Lebanese nationalist opposition is ready for a settlement through a consensual president and a government of partnership,” Hajj Hassan told the rally.
“But the opposition is also ready today to pursue its (sit-in) action, if the other party led a different track, away from consensus and partnership,” he said.
“We will continue to stay in the downtown area until the government falls,” said Zaynab, a 37-year-old woman from Beirut”s southern suburbs, or Dahiyeh.
“We are here to support the opposition. This government is illegitimate and guided by remote control by foreigners,” the chador-clad Hizbullah supporter told AFP.
Sarah Bazzi, a 40-year-old Hizbullah supporter also wearing the head-to-toe black chador, said: “We don”t feel like we are represented in this government, so it should go away.
“The opposition is at least two million people if not more, so when they say that they represent the majority, they are telling a lie,” she said.
March 14, which holds a majority of the seats in parliament, accuses the opposition of seeking to block ratification of an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, widely blamed on Syria.
The continued sit-in comes as the country grapples with a dangerous political vacuum that has left the presidency vacant because of a standoff between pro- and anti-Syrian factions.
The year-long sit-in has transformed a large swathe of Beirut”s usually bustling downtown into a ghost town and led to the shutdown of some 200 businesses and thousands of job losses.
And although the sprawling tent city pitched by the protestors on streets leading to Saniora”s offices is now empty for the most part, it is a sore reminder for passers-by of the crisis pitting the government against the opposition led by Hizbullah.
Groups of young men mill outside the tents at night, some smoking water pipes and others chit-chatting about politics, reading a newspaper or watching television.