Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has launched a vehement verbal attack on the Lebanese Forces and its leader Samir Geagea, during an electoral rally in the Keserwan-Jbeil district.

“I’ve heard them repeatedly saying that those who vote for the FPM would be voting for Hizbullah, what a joke! In turn I tell you that those who vote for the LF would be voting for Daesh and for Israel and its regional allies,” Bassil charged.

President Michel Aoun on Friday lamented that “some of the money that is being paid in the electoral juncture is coming from abroad,” adding that he is “betting on voters’ awareness and their rejection of being commodities that can be bought and sold.”

“There are candidates who are exploiting the difficult economic and social circumstances and paying money to appropriate the choice of voters, which should be free of any restraints,” Aoun told a delegation from the European observer mission that will monitor Sunday’s elections.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan on Thursday warned that boycotting elections would be “surrender,” while stressing that Lebanon should not be “surrendered” to the “enemies of Arabism.”

“The upcoming parliamentary elections are an important juncture in Lebanon’s history and we have given our directions and instructions to our Lebanese sons and brothers to take part and not to boycott,” Daryan said in a meeting at Dar al-Fatwa with the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Qatari ambassadors.

Cabinet has approved in a session Thursday to renew the expired passports for voters in the parliamentary elections.

The passports will be renewed for one day, only to be used for voting on May 15. The renewal cost will be LBP 200,000 for each passport.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari met Thursday at Dar al-Fatwa in Beirut with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, the country’s top Sunni Muslim cleric.

During the meeting, Bukhari expressed “the firm solidarity of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries with the Lebanese people, and our permanent keenness on Lebanon’s security, stability, territorial integrity, Arab belonging and independent political decision.”

The U.N. Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) is concerned about the prolonged pre-trial detention, overcrowding and “deplorable living conditions in places of deprivation of liberty” that it observed during its second visit to Lebanon, a U.N. statement said.

The third phase of parliamentary elections, dedicated to the public employees who will oversee Sunday's polls, kicked off Thursday across Lebanon.

The Lebanese had voted abroad in 58 countries on Friday and Sunday, with a 60 percent turnout.

President Michel Aoun said Thursday, at the beginning of a regular Cabinet session, that the port blast probe must resume quickly.

"The stalemate has been unjust to some detainees who might be innocent," he added, as he pointed out that many issues must be addressed quickly before the government becomes a caretaker government.

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi has called on Lebanon’s Sunni community to turn out heavily in the May 15 parliamentary elections, warning that “reluctance from practicing the right of voting would deepen the country’s crises.”

“You actively took part in founding the country and enshrining its National Pact. You did not take part in civil war and you did not take up arms. Today you are invited to participate heavily in pulling Lebanon out of a war that is of another nature – the war of poverty, deprivation and employment, which has entered into the homes of all Lebanese,” Mawlawi said in an interview with the Saudi al-Bilad newspaper.

President Michel Aoun on Wednesday sent a cable of condolences to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh with “treacherous Israeli bullets as she was practicing her journalistic work.”

“As she joins the procession of the martyrs of occupied Palestine, who faced the Israeli occupation’s arrogance with their firm will, she confirms once again, with her blood, that this brutal occupation has total disregard for all international conventions and laws that govern journalistic work,” Aoun says in the cable.