Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros Rahi, pointed out that “the parliamentary elections led to a new national atmosphere, which gave citizens a dose of hope for positive and national change that would encourage the international community to help Lebanon seriously, not symbolically, to get out of its economic hardship and its existential crisis.”

The Patriarch stressed, while presiding over the mass at the patriarchal edifice in Bkerke, that “what drew our attention was that the security turmoil erupted the day after the results of the parliamentary elections: the fuel crisis returned, medicine and bread were lost, commodity prices were rising, and the dollar was being manipulated.”

“Wasn’t the opposite supposed to happen, to secure what was missing, and what is expensive becomes cheap?”, Rahi asked.

“It is as if there are those who want to disrupt the reality of parliamentary change and the movement for political change, and want to overturn the election results and dominate the upcoming elections,” he added.