September 12, 2003

The Choices
New England Americans for Lebanon - Boston
Facing dissent from his own base for his ever-changing and unpopular positions, such as supporting governments that for decades have impoverished Lebanon and its people, Walid Jumblatt attacked the opposition, its leaders, and its candidate, Mr. Hikmat Deeb, for the Baabda–Aley by-elections with insults befitting a “politician” of his caliber.
It was only last week when he said from his Beirut residence during a meeting of his parliamentary block that he does not want to incite people to vote especially on sectarian grounds, but keeping true with his feudal heritage he once again does the opposite and orders the Lebanese Druze, as if he owned them, to vote for the regime’s candidate Mr. Helou by resorting to forgotten rhetoric from a war he starred in.
That is exactly why Hikmat Deeb is running in these elections. To prove once and for all that the Lebanese people are not owned by anyone, especially feudal warlords or politicians. Hikmat Deeb and the FPM are presenting the Lebanese in the Baabda-Aley district in particular and Lebanon in general with a platform that tackles sovereignty, social problems, corruption and many more issues that are plaguing the nation. They are asking for the people’s vote based on that platform and not for blind tribal allegiance the kind Jumblatt is appealing to.
Ignoring a call by some Druze to use a blank vote to show their discontent with his stands and the worsening situation in the country is in, and undermining his followers' freedom of choice and desire for change, Mr. Jumblatt orders them to vote for Helou under the argument that to do otherwise would jeopardize national unity and would be tantamount to beating the drums of war.
These are the choices the Lebanese are faced with:
· Occupation, feudalism, tutelage, corruption, impoverishment, humiliation, and all the miseries the successive regimes have
brought on Lebanon since 1990, or
· Change for which all Lebanese from all backgrounds are striving.
We firmly believe that Hikmat Deeb represents that change with his patriotic platform that addresses the people and the nation’s problems, and not the interests of the feudal politicians. We ask all voters in the Baabda-Aley district to give their votes to him and start the long road of recovery.
On a different note, we remember on this second anniversary of the terrorist attacks against the US all the victims of terror in the US, Lebanon, and the world