Aoun: Change began with the July 2006 war, and has continued

Source: Al-Manar TV, 8-11-2008
The head of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc MP Michel Aoun expressed on Saturday worries that the political money might have reached universities, calling on university students to strive for change and reject isolation.
Speaking ahead of a delegation of AUB and LAU students who visited him at his home in Rabiyeh, Aoun said that all those who are 18 years old will have soon their rights. "This is the great achievement...which will come about at the end of May or in June," Aoun vowed, in a reference to the law that would make university students eligible of voting in the forthcoming elections.
"The FPM practices a policy of openness," Aoun said. "You have to be a people of accountability," he continued. "And this happens at the ballot box. This is the first duty you have. Democracy is the practice of choice, through which you express conviction and your opinion," he emphasized.
The General stressed that change began in Lebanon with the July 2006 war, and has continued. "We won the July War. We won another war: the war to divide the region. We prevented that. We are not with the policy of one ideology, such as communism and the USSR. We are not against communism...but we are with pluralism," he said.
He told the student group that the Lebanese cannot live in fear of one another. "We are against isolation," Aoun said, "but we have overcome that and there is no risk of anyone isolating anyone else. We now have relations built on equality."