LCP: Let May 25 be a stage to accomplish Social and National Liberation
They rose up in various regions against the occupation and did not kneel. They offered everything they possessed on the path of liberation and change, the path of national and social liberation, to ensure that Lebanon would remain dear, fortified, and victorious. Reviving this occasion is an act of appreciation and honor for the first founders since the forties of the last century, for the martyrs of the Popular Guard, the Ansar Forces, and the Lebanese National Resistance Front, and all those who walked on that path among the resistance fighters, from various forces, political parties, and organizations that achieved the liberation. With them, our peoples fought against imperialist domination and its tools represented in the Zionist entity and its regimes of exploitation and impoverishment, rushing towards condemned normalization with the enemy. We salute Palestine, the central cause of the Arabs, and its heroic people and resistance forces who continue to fight against the occupation until liberation and return, and the establishment of the Palestinian state on the entire Palestinian national soil with Jerusalem as its capital.
This year, the occasion comes while our Lebanese people, our party, and the forces of democratic change are engaged in the political, economic, and social struggle, fulfilling the cause for which their senior national leaders, politicians, trade unionists, and thinkers sacrificed their lives. It is a victory for the national and popular spirit of the October 17 uprising, on the path of real change and the preservation of the achievements of liberation. However, this cause is threatened by a political system that generates crises and a political power that depends on foreign guardians.
Furthermore, this occasion comes at a time when Lebanon is facing its worst political, economic, and social crisis that threatens its fate and existence. Obstruction has become a characteristic of this stage, with a comprehensive collapse of most of the state's institutions and its health, social, and educational services. Authoritarian dependence and wrong policies prevail, as well as excessive reliance and loyalties condemned to foreign influences and Western hegemony that interfere in all aspects. The judiciary lacks independence, and those in power, along with the banking and judicial sectors, seek protection and avoid accountability. They resort to repression, silencing dissent, and punishing defenders of public freedoms and social rights.
Large sectors have halted their operations, funds have been looted and stolen, high prices and the collapse of the national currency have eroded the purchasing power of salaries and wages. Compensation for guarantee funds and small deposits has evaporated, along with the health and social protections for workers, professionals, employees, retirees, and contractors. Unemployment and poverty have infiltrated every home, and marginalized education has devastating effects on the future generations who are forced to emigrate, with the airport becoming their only option. Death has become a tragic reality due to the loss of human dignity, hunger, and the lack of access to necessary medications and hospitalization.
Because liberation was not completed through this change, this is the situation of a homeland that defeated the occupation and liberated its land with the faith it possessed in the justice of its cause. Our people and their heroic resistance did not liberate the land and sacrifice their lives so that this criminal authority, which practices denial and avoidance of punishment, can govern through various means. It has gone to the extent of relinquishing Lebanon's gas and oil wealth, its national sovereignty, and its land and sea borders through an international treaty with the Zionist entity and an agreement with its operators, even compromising employment opportunities. By obeying their orders and adhering to the predetermined formulas of the dominating American and Western financial entities, they have become the problem, not the solution. The solution lies in political, economic, and social change by transforming the structure of the dependent, exploitative system into an alternative secular democratic system that safeguards liberation and accomplishes transformation. A national and democratic alliance capable of leading the struggle on multiple fronts is needed to establish a secular democratic state, a state of social justice, and a state with a productive economy. Let us commemorate the Resistance and Liberation Day as a celebration of national and social liberation, as a pledge and loyalty to the martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners, and to all those who have paid a high price on this path, for the sake of a free homeland and a contented people.
LCP Political Bureau
May 24, 2023
