Marking Lebanon’s 78th Independence Day commemoration and the registration deadline for Lebanese expatriates to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called on Monday for “summoning independence as a history that began as a station for assuming national responsibility that ensured independence and liberation from colonialism, and continued, in many independent stations, to confront and resist the Israeli aggression and occupation, and to consolidate the unity and Arabness of Lebanon as a final homeland for all its sons.”

“We are all concerned at this moment, which is the most existentially dangerous for Lebanon and the Lebanese, to fortify Lebanon and its independence by immunizing the judiciary and achieving its independence as an authority that adheres to the rules of the constitution and the law, away from politicization, maliciousness, sectarianism and confessionalism,” he said.

‘We are concerned with liberating the economy from its dependence and surrender to the power of monopolies and monopolists; with liberating citizens’ livelihood and medicine from black market dealers; with liberating people’s deposits and lifetime savings from banks by legislation and approving laws that preserve their rights; with restoring trust between the citizen and the state and its institutions, and the world’s confidence in Lebanon’s position, role, message and human being; a Lebanon that is committed to fulfilling its constitutional entitlements on time,” Berri asserted.

“On Independence Day, to the resident Lebanese who continue to hold on to the embers of belonging to the nation, the land, and the constants, and to the expatriate Lebanese who rendered the area of ​​their homeland the size of the universe, who have always been and still are Lebanon’s ever shining sun and stars that do not know decline… To them, at this moment in which they confirmed the depth of their belonging to Lebanon and their partnership right in everything that ensures the livelihood of the state and society by registering to partake in the parliamentary elections, we pay tribute and respect,” the Speaker went on.

“You will participate in the elections liberated from the sectarianism that has plagued us internally,” Berri emphasized, addressing the Lebanese expatriates, adding, “The bet is on you as being the nucleus of the civil state to which the Lebanese aspire, and in which Lebanon’s salvation lies.”

“I salute the Lebanese army, its leadership, officers, soldiers and individuals, the security forces and the resistance fighters, all the resistance fighters and the martyrs, all the martyrs, who made independence and sovereignty and preserved the rights, wealth and borders,” Berri concluded.