The Lebanese Communist Party organized a popular protest march this morning, which set out from outside the Central Bank in Hamra towards the Ministry of Economy, passing through the Parliament House and far-reaching the Government Serail in Riad El Solh Square, under the slogan, “To the street to build an opposition national coalition that allows for modifying the balance of power in Lebanon…To the street to build an alternative political system that establishes the building of a secular, democratic state…To the street to confront the system and produce an alternative authority to manage the transitional phase.”

In his word before protesters, Communist Party Secretary-General, Hanna Gharib, declared the launching of moves towards an alternative that paves the way for the rise of a secular state in Lebanon.

Gharib criticized the current ruling authority for bringing the country to the brink of collapse, amidst the rampant economic, financial, social and daily-living crisis that is plaguing the Lebanese and putting them through enormous sufferings in their struggle to secure their sustenance and bare livelihood necessities.

Addressing comrades and demonstrators, Gharib said: “You took to the street and did not disappoint the hopes of your people in their determination to continue escalating the confrontation en-route to social and national liberation, which is the path of the Lebanese National Resistance Front that combined its liberation struggle against the Zionist occupation with its struggle for change and liberation from subordination to the sectarian political system and the system of exploitation and corruption.”

Gharib emphasized that their march today comes to continue the moves towards achieving the project of a secular democratic state, the state of citizenship and social justice, and the state that resists normalization and the Zionist entity, its occupation and aggression. He added: “You took to the street for the sake of shifting Lebanon to a political system that establishes the building of this state based on the widest political coalition of change forces, which takes responsibility for leading the struggle against the ruling system, and for yielding an alternative authority to manage the transitional phase and to endorse a number of legislative laws, at the foremost of which is a vote law that adopts relativity outside the sectarian constraint, and a single district based on Article 22 of the Constitution.”

“You have come here to pledge your project in the face of the ruling system’s plans in seeking to reproduce its statelets, affiliations, sectarianism and confessionalism that only produce destructive wars, and in confrontation of the calls for a new international or constitutional conference that leads to a new sectarian settlement, and a new quota system that supports the impoverished sectarian system that generates civil wars indefinitely…Is it not time to hold this system accountable for the ordeals that these projects have generated? Is it not time to learn from the lessons of these experiences and put an end to their constant repetition?” questioned Gharib.

He went on to state that the ruling system has exposed Lebanon and its people to the world and to the Zionist enemy that lurks against it, considering that the actions of the ruling class have undermined the dignity of the Lebanese in a manner that even the Zionist enemy was incapable of doing. “The attack on dignities is worse than civil war, and more difficult than repression, arrest and killing; and the failure to provide free vaccinations to all the Lebanese, the unfair budget procedures, the random lifting of subsidies affecting the bread loaf, the medicine pill and fuel, the continuous power cuts, the huge rise in consumer prices, the ruining of public education and the state university, the absence of Capital Control, and the list goes on and on, with no accountability or punishment. Who is held accountable? Each blames the other!” regretted Gharib.

He urged the various Lebanese sides to stop betting on external settlements, while the Lebanese are paying the price every day. “Today we announce the launching and expansion of moves with all the forces of democratic change, in a gradual manner, to culminate on Labor Day on the first of May, to be a true national day of salvation, at the hands of its toilers, employees, youth, male and female workers, those marginalized and unemployed, as well as its professionals, teachers, contractors, retirees, and so on…leading to the establishment of the political alternative that would pave the way for the secular, democratic state, the state of social justice,” concluded Gharib.