Word: jumblatt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...basic issue of the discussions was how to arrange the quick election of a successor to President Suleiman Franjieh, the conservative, discredited Maronite leader from the northern town of Zgharta. The predominantly Moslem leftist coalition called the National Movement, led by Kamal Jumblatt, has vowed to fight on until Franjieh is ousted. At week's end the 98 members of the Lebanese Parliament-meeting for the first time in more than a month-approved a constitutional amendment providing for immediate elections...
...Jumblatt is widely regarded as the "Mr. Clean" of Lebanon's tainted politics and a longtime influential kingmaker. The founder of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party, he backed Camille Chamoun for the presidency in a bloodless coup in 1952. Jumblatt soon turned on his protege for failing to enact economic and social reforms; in 1958 he was among the leaders of an anti-Chamoun uprising that disintegrated after U.S. Marines landed on Lebanon's beaches to restore order. Jumblatt has generally taken a strong socialist and pro-Palestinian line. Although he is nobody's man by any means, Jumblatt...
...campaign for secularization, Jumblatt sees the Maronite Christians as the principal enemies. He complains that "they want to dominate the country. Instead of displaying the great values of Christianity?love, charity, justice?they act like the petty old Christian sects of the Byzantine era, who quarreled about the sex of angels or whether Christ was of one or two natures and executed those who lost the argument." At the same time, he points to his home region as an example of how the country's religions can live together. In the mountainous Chouf, where in more peaceful times he ruled...
...National Movement that Jumblatt heads also cuts across sectarian lines. It includes his own Progressive Socialists, as well as Communists, several groups of Nasserites and followers of the new renegade "Lebanese Arab Army." It also has the backing of the leftist Syrian Popular Party, headed by Inam Raad, a Christian, and including a sizable number of other Christians...
...Despite Jumblatt's acceptance of the ten-day "freeze," he clearly intends to carry on his struggle against the obsolete sectarian political system that led to the civil war. "A false compromise is a bad compromise," he told Correspondent Wynn. "Somebody must win, and somebody must lose. We must go ahead to a real evolution of the country...