Future TV In Bsharreh

The complex task of rebranding Samir Geagea.

“My Lebanese countrymen […] We have fought a civil war that may have had its logic at the time. But this logic does not fit nowadays.”

This is how Samir Geagea effectively declared, from the airport, that he’s a changed person. Out are the days where “The security of the Christian people is above all other considerations”, and in are those where “we should all look shoulder-to-shoulder for the shiny days ahead… to build the new Lebanon in Muslim-Christian national unity”.

It is easy for everyone to say that the past is behind us, but as Samir Geagea appears to know very well, the transformation from a sectarian to a national leadership is a tricky and complex game.

To effectively achieve the leap, a politician has to convince the other party that he indeed has their interest at heart, while at the same time maintain legitimacy with his core constituency. Two people are playing this game at this moment, Saad Hariri and Samir Geagea, and both have to keep eye on balance. So far, both are doing very well.

Let’s start with Hariri. His actions have shown lately a lot of rapprochement with the Christians, a big part of which he inherited from his father. But he has to also keep his eye on his core Moslem constituency, which might start to grumble if Hariri becomes “too Christian” and forgets his Moslem “mandate”. This is why Hariri is playing a double game: bombard the Moslems with Future T.V. positive coverage of Samir Geagea to change their hostile attitudes, while at the same time appease them by showing them that he is still a “strong Moslem leader” by picking up the occasional fight with president Lahhoud (and Michel Aoun), like the recent one over who should head the governments’ meetings.

The same is happening with Samir Geagea. His actions and talk have shown a lot of willingness to reach out and to think nationally and for the interest of all the Lebanese. Witness how, unlike Aoun, he blamed the national debt not on Rafik Hariri, whom he referred to as “people who were building Lebanon”, but on the Syrians who were “suffocating” him. But at the same time, Geagea still has to maintain his “Strong Christian Leader” image by appeasing some of his hard-core Christianists (like the people who are maintaining his website). This is why he was talking of “a lack of balance” that “needs to be fixed”.

People don’t just forget the past, and words must be buttressed by actions. This is why the Hariri-Geagea Tango is a good model for reconciliation in Lebanon.
The more the merrier.