Miqati Says ‘Sabotaging the Nation is a Crime,’ March 14 Suffering from ‘Disorder’
Prime Minister Najib Miqati snapped back at the March 14 alliance on Monday accusing its members of carrying out a crime against the nation and attacking the cabinet for being unable to confront the truth that they lost power.
“Sabotaging the nation is a crime,” Miqati said in a statement. “It is the national responsibility of everyone to preserve civil peace and stability and not to sabotage or make fictitious heroic acts that stir tension.”
He said the March 14 forces that met at the Bristol hotel in Beirut on Sunday were suffering from “disorder and bouts of extreme anger,” and were verbally attacking the cabinet for “failing to confront the truth that they lost power through democratic means.”
According to Miqati, the Bristol conferees “used the crime against former Premier Rafik Hariri to pour their anger and their hatred on the cabinet for known reasons.”
He said the March 14 forces had expected that Miqati’s government would not be formed and the country would remain in a vacuum over the “failure” of the caretaking cabinet of Premier Saad Hariri to carry out its duties.
The prime minister reiterated that clause 14 of the policy statement stresses the right to achieve justice in ex-PM Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination unlike what the March 14 statement said.
The Bristol conferees said that Miqati’s government disavowed in its ministerial statement the demand for justice to which the Lebanese state has committed itself in previous policy statements.
March 14 further misled the public by accusing the government of evoking the hostility of the citizens and relatives of martyrs and pushing the Lebanese state outside international legitimacy, Miqati said.
Everyone knows about the “settlement” that the coalition tried to reach at a certain stage at the expense of martyrs, the premier said.
“There is enough proof and documents on how the suggestions, at times printed and other times handwritten, were making the rounds inside Lebanon and outside to lure direct and indirect offers” for a settlement, he added.
Miqati also criticized the March 14 conferees for saying that the new cabinet has carried out a coup against the Lebanese. “As if those who met at the Bristol have the sole authority to represent the Lebanese or are the sole agents of the blood of martyrs.”
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