Aoun Calls for 'Solidarity' in New Year

President Michel Aoun on Monday called on Lebanese to show “solidarity” in the new year.

“Through our solidarity, will and effort, we can make tomorrow better than yesterday and the new year better than the past year,” Aoun said in a tweet marking the new year, wishing well-being to Lebanon and the Lebanese.

Aoun is engaged in a spat with Speaker Nabih Berri over a controversial decree granting one-year seniority to a number of officers.

After the decree was signed by Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Berri and Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature.

Aoun and his aides have argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him have argued against.

Ain el-Tineh sources have meanwhile warned that the decree would tip sectarian balance in favor of Christians in the army's highest echelons.

The officers in question were undergoing their first year of officer training at the Military Academy when Syrian forces ousted Aoun’s military government from Baabda in 1990. They were suspended by the pro-Damascus authorities until 1993 before they resumed their officer training course as second-year cadets.