Why the French candidates are so keen to visit Lebanon

What the Arabic press says about the French presidential election. Translated by Jennifer Attieh

Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential frontrunner, visited Lebanon a few days ago. She met president Michel Aoun as well as prime minister Saad Hariri. Ms Le Pen’s rival, Emmanuel Macron, paid a visit to Beirut in January, while right-wing candidate François Fillon, who is to be the subject of a full judicial inquiry over allegations that he paid family members for fake parliamentary assistant jobs, cancelled his visit to Lebanon and Iraq this month.

Writing in Aletihad, the Arabic-language sister publication of The National, the columnist Hazem Saghieh expressed his views on Ms Le Pen’s double position towards Arabs and Muslims.

“First, she harbours racist and anti-Islamic sentiments that mainly target North African immigrants and French people of North African descent,” Saghieh said.

Second, she has long defended Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, calling on France and the West in general to start a dialogue with him.

In a media interview she gave last month, the Front National party leader even stressed that “president Al Assad will win the war against Islamist fundamentalists.”

As such, Saghieh saw in Ms Le Pen’s visit a racial motive as she sought to exploit the region’s crises and the suffering of its people, especially minorities. It's “a path paved by the new American president, Donald Trump, whose stance on minorities differs from that of the Muslim majority in seven countries in this region, which is reflected in the immigration ban".

According to the writer, Ms Le Pen’s visit to Lebanon builds on the country’s Christian particularity in the Middle East, while Mr Macron chose to visit Lebanon for a totally different reason.

“During his trip, Mr Macron called for the adoption of a balanced policy towards the Syrian conflict, nonetheless without taking advantage of the issue of minorities and majorities in the Arab world,” he added.

Saghieh concluded that a great part of the French elections is taking place in the Arab world. This explains why a few weeks before the first round of voting, these candidates are visiting this region.

According to the Arabic-language commentator Khairallah Khairallah, Ms Le Pen’s visit to Lebanon shows the true colours of France.

Writing in the London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Arab, Khairallah pointed out that Ms Le Pen could have visited Lebanon from the perspective of France’s affinity to the country and the thousands of French voters of Lebanese origin.

The writer found it outrageous that the representative of a racist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant party visited Lebanon to promote the Syrian president and all that he represents.

“Marine Le Pen visited Lebanon in a bid to terrify the Lebanese of ISIL, unaware that the Syrian regime is worse than ISIL as it has played a key role in creating the group.

“Mr Al Assad and ISIL are two sides of the same coin, a fact totally overlooked by Ms Le Pen, who seeks to shore up her popularity in France by adopting opportunistic positions on the one hand and ignoring the reality on the other,” Khairallah added.

According to the writer, the National Front party leader has revealed that France no longer has reliable visionaries to run for office.

He saw Alain Juppé as the only candidate capable of restoring the dignity of the French presidency, but he was defeated in the right-wing primary by the scandal-tainted Mr Fillon.

“As for Mr Macron, he turned out to be a limelight-seeker with his condemnation of France’s colonial past in Algeria,” he noted.

That said, the writer considered that Mr Macron still has strong chances of winning, although his presidential qualifications leave much to be desired.

He concluded that each candidate in the French election is looking to secure trivial victories in the absence of a clear vision of France’s potential role in Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

* Translated by Jennifer Attieh