Maimed TV anchor to run as MP
A prominent Lebanese journalist who was maimed last year in an assassination attempt says she will run for a parliamentary seat that has become vacant after the death of a legislator.
May Chidiac, an anchorwoman with LBC television, told a news conference in Paris, where she is receiving treatment, that she would run as an independent.
Chidiac said she wanted to work in parliament “so that what happened to me does not happen to others and so that the series of crimes taking place in Lebanon are not repeated.”
“My sacrifices were at the level of the whole of Lebanon and I hope I will get the support of Lebanon as a whole,” she said.
Chidiac, sitting on a wheel chair, said in footage aired by LBC she hoped “that there will be accordance concerning my nomination.”
Vacancy
A parliament seat became vacant on Monday with the death of Edmond Naim, who as Central Bank governor managed to keep Lebanon’s finances functioning during the last five years of the civil war.
Naim ran in last year’s elections on the slate of the Christian Lebanese Forces.
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“My sacrifices were at the level of the whole of Lebanon and I hope I will get the support of Lebanon as a whole” |
Lebanon’s 128-member parliament is equally divided between the country’s Muslim and Christian communities.
Since Naim was a Maronite Christian, candidates running for the post have to be from the same sect.
Proving that the election battle for the seat will be tough, Dory Chamoun, leader of the Christian National Liberals Party, said on Friday he would run.
It was not clear if Michel Aoun, the former prime minister and army commander, would name a candidate to run.
Bomb attacks
Last September, Chidiac lost her left leg and arm in after bomb placed under her car exploded.
The attack was one of more than a dozen have killed or wounded politicians, journalists and other Lebanese in the last year.
On 12 December, Gibran Tueni, the general manager of the leading Al-Nahar newspaper, was killed in a bombing along with two of his bodyguards.
The bombs started with a devastating blast on 14 February 2005 that killed former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri and 20 other people in Beirut.