Caretaker Energy Minister Gebran Bassil blasts his ally Hezbollah for disloyalty toward the Free Patriotic Movement.
Bassil said in remarks published Tuesday that Hezbollah “stabbed both Tayyar [FPM] and democracy in the back” over the matter of challenges to the Constitutional Council.
The council, set to meet Tuesday, failed to convene twice last week after three of its members – two Shiites and a Druze – did not show up.
The FPM and President Michel Sleiman have each handed petitions to Council over the recent decision to extend Parliament’s term.
Political and judicial sources told The Daily Star the extension of Parliament’s mandate becomes effective this week because the Constitutional Council will not be able to meet for lack of a quorum.
Parliament’s current term expires on June 20.
Nevertheless, Bassil told pan-Arab Ash-sharq Al-Awsat that Hezbollah’s behavior "will not affect the strategic alliance between the two parties.”
On Hezbollah’s military intervention in Qusair, in the Syrian province of Homs, Bassil said the FPM “understands” the resistance party’s option “to defend itself and Lebanon.”
But Bassil said Hezbollah “must not go too far in its intervention” without explaining why it is operating beyond the border.
