Bassil Slams Critics as 'Mad Lunatics', Decries 'Character Assassination'

Free Patriotic Movement chief and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil lashed out Sunday at those who attacked him in recent days, calling them “mad lunatics” and accusing them of a “character assassination” attempt.

“Whenever you hear these attacks against us, rest assured that we are doing very well and that we are facing a lunatic asylum that has gone mad,” Bassil said during a tour of the Baabda district.

“They cannot blackmail us in anything and we will clash with anyone who tries to encroach on us or on the country. Whenever they become many we will become bigger and whenever they become strong we will be stronger,” Bassil said of his critics.

Referring to the storm of criticism that he faced in recent days, the FPM chief said: “What happened is not over words I said but rather over fictional remarks. They invented sentences and started responding to them, including ones about political Sunnism, the Lebanese University professors and the sacking of the Internal Security Forces chief,” Bassil said, referring to remarks attributed to him in several media reports.

“Everything they are attacking is not real,” he added.

Commenting on the controversy over remarks attributed to him about “political Sunnism,” Bassil pointed out that President Michel Aoun – the FPM’s founder – is not “the son of political Maronism.”

“We do not support political Maronism, political Shiism or political Sunnism. We are the sons of the National Pact,” Bassil added, referring to an unwritten 1943 agreement that set up the foundations of modern Lebanon as a country based on Muslim-Christian partnership.

He clarified: “I have never spoken about the sacking of the ISF chief, but let no one try to scare us and subjugate us so that we do not expose mistakes, seeing as there is someone in the state who is ‘higher in rank than the premier’ and who is granting licenses and committing other violations. They always create preemptive problems for alternative objectives.”

ISF chief Maj. Gen. Imad Othman has been accused by some political parties of distributing illegal permits for the drilling of artesian wells.

Apparently referring to the war of words between the FPM and Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal Movement, Bassil reassured that his movement is keen on the political settlement that led to Aoun’s election and Hariri’s appointment as PM.

“I do not like the word settlement, seeing as there is an understanding based on recognizing the other and their representative legitimacy, and there are people who are bothered from the presence of a strong presidential tenure and from the ‘return of Baabda to Baabda,’” Bassil added.

“We are keen on the understanding because it is based on right, not on settlements and deals, and on the National Pact which was absent and now it has come back. This is the normal situation and we will do everything necessary to ‘sabotage the current sabotage attempt’ and to preserve the understanding,” the FPM chief went on to say.

He however underlined that there can be no “settlement” over corruption.

“The core of the understanding between the president and the premier is to expose corrupts and those undermining the country, not to cover up for anyone,” Bassil added.

“Character assassination and murder is like physical assassination and murder or rather uglier. It is not a coincidence that this wave of hatred is being launched simultaneously against the FPM,” the FPM chief said.