Commenting on the tumult arising around the project of municipal and "moukhtar" elections, the Guardians of the Cedars - National Lebanese Movement issued the following communiqué.

        Some seven months prior to the municipal and moukhtar elections, a clamor began to arise with some approving, some against and others refusing only the appointment of one third of the municipal members provided in the electoral law elaborated by the Taëf gang.

        Moreover, the press began to set aside large areas of their pages to the subject and the observers feverishly attempting to discover the hidden dimensions and motives of the law.

        We hasten to declare that the mere idea of staging these elections in the country's present odd political situation, is but another stratagem to divert the attention of the people from the life of despair, coercion and frustration they are enduring, and direct them to wallow in petty municipal and family feuds. It also attempts to turn their attention away from the pressing social problems, and from the supreme national concern which is the stifling nightmare of foreign military occupation.

        We may add that the majority of the Lebanese are indifferent to these elections because they don't believe they will be any better than the parliamentary elections held in 1992 and 1996 either by lack of democracy or by blatant operations or fraud designed to ensure the arrival of the yes-men to the Syrian occupation and its indigenous stooges.

        Furthermore the appointment of a third of the members will be achieved not according to criteria of suitability, but because of their indefectible fealty to those stooges.

        We therefore believe, as do most Lebanese, that the Taëf gang is unfit to discharge this capital diplomatic role for the above mentioned reasons and incentives and also because of these additional reasons:

1. Because it has relinquished its national, social and economic obligations and resigned its political responsibilities in favor of the sisterly trustee.
2. Because it has assassinated public life everywhere in Lebanon and is incapable of reviving political life.
3. Because there is a complete divorce between the public and government circles and institutions.
4. Because the policy of curtailing freedom has become the watchword of the Taëf gang alongside the deliberate psychological terrorism it exerts against all forms of opposition which in their eyes is an enemy that must be continuously staved off.

        We call once more upon the Lebanese to boycott these questionable schemes, in particular this new democratic farce, and exert every effort to end the military occupations in order to restore the nation's stolen liberty.

At the service of Lebanon,
The Chief,

Etienne Sacre.