My Fellow Lebanese,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Tomorrow, we celebrate our seventy-third Independence Day. This year, the occasion has a special taste, after our struggle has fructified, the blood of our martyrs has blossomed, and the pledge we had made to them is on the path of achievement.
If Independence Day did not celebrate the people's reassurance about their security and future, if it weren’t a festival for national sovereignty, it would no longer be a celebration, but rather a painful commemoration and an aching torment.
May our will and determination preserve the joy of this Day, and prevent it from becoming again a sad commemoration. I am confident that we can.
For years, Lebanon has been living in the middle of a region hit by the earthquakes of destructive wars, which began with movements of demands under attractive and promising slogans to improve the systems, in order to make them more democratic and just, but soon turned into violent acts. Armed clashes broke out between the warring forces, providing the foreign powers with pretexts to interfere and control the fate of the fighting nations.
The contradictory estimations by the Lebanese of the dangers threatening the country, their magnitude, their type, their impact on the society, and their outcome, created different reactions and results to hard and conflicting positions that had negative fallout on the relations among the Lebanese parties.
As Lebanon sometimes interacted, and other times reacted with the causes of the Arab East, the overheat of the atmosphere in the region almost cracked the national unity; the Lebanese started to feel that their stability is threatened, especially with the limited capabilities of the Armed Forces facing the imminent dangers.
Hence, in this situation, the consolidation of national unity becomes an urgent need and a top priority, for it shields Lebanon, ensures its stability and protects it from the repercussions going on around, and this is everybody’s responsibility, as officials as citizens.

My Fellow Lebanese,
You are concerned about your stability but you are also concerned about your independence, for you feel that it is constantly threatened and incomplete, due to the foreign interventions that always faced the national decisions related to your most basic right to choose your leaders and practice the democratic conducts or even defend yourselves.
Consequently, we have the obligation to shield the independence and restore its strength, which means refraining from resorting to the “outside” to beg for compressive decisions on the country, to obtain a private benefit on the detriment of the public interest, whatever this benefit may be.
Independence is not just a festive scene held yearly, but rather a pulse of hearts beating with every flag float. It is the adhesion to a people, sharing mutual life, showing solidarity for better and for worse, on a land that gave us an identity we ought to preserve; we cannot  treat it as a piece of good on external markets, for if we sell it we lose the identity. People without a land are refugees, and a land without a nation is a commonage land.
Your land is your identity, and is our responsibility, safeguard it!
A land and a nation, this is the country that we swore to preserve, respect its Constitution and laws, defend its land and independence, protect its people and provide its subsistence. It is for these fundamental missions that institutions were established, creating the State, which attends to the issues of the nation and the citizens.
Our institutions have suffered, and are still suffering, from an increased weakness due to the deficient political and constitutional practice. Despite all the impediments, we managed, however after a long sufferance, to sew an agreement, which marked the beginning of a new era resulting the return to the State’s institutions. Nevertheless, these institutions can no longer rise unless they are modernized, and unless their working procedures and rules are changed.

My Fellow Lebanese,
No matter how much change we embrace, things will not straighten out unless we free the human element from the corruption culture. This must first appear in the people’s moral attributes at the highest ranks of responsibility, for they have to be the role model.
It occurs to me, in this context, a position of a Supreme Court Judge in one of the great nations while choosing a judge to complete the staff of his court. He called one young lawyer and asked him whether he was interested in joining court. The counselor was confused and tried to apologize because he was new to the practice, with little experience. The judge answered him then: “We know that you are honest, straightforward and hard-working, and if you are familiar with some of the laws, this will help you.”
Yes, the moral attributes come first, then serious and diligent work that accumulates knowledge. With these values we can purge the minds from the culture of corruption, build a nation, and rise with our people to the finest levels. Indeed, the effects of corruption are devastating, they may vary from the embezzlement of people’s money to wasting public funds, to dragging the country into bankruptcy, from betraying a nation to selling it out at the auction.
It is wise to ask: why is corruption so endemic? Is corruption a tax imposed only on our society and our country? Of course not! Corruption is part of the human nature, but it is fought with education by nurturing the scale of values, and with law by proper legislation.

My Fellow Lebanese,
We have brothers and sisters, citizens who live in the border areas, from North to South, forming the first shield for the protection of Lebanon. We must grant them a special attention, to develop their towns and villages, developing our rural areas, promoting the bonds that link their residents to the State, which consolidates national unity and reduces land migration.
A society living in poverty and need is exposed to harsh trials, with the subsequent security deficiency and social unrest.
The nation does not only live with its crowded cities and suburbs, but rather with a balanced distribution of the population throughout its territories. 

My Fellow Lebanese,
Despite the conflicting interests and deep divisions that happened and are happening around Lebanon, and despite the internal controversies, threatening the structure of the entity and the national unity, our Army kept its faith in its missionary role and global oath. It was indeed the strength that revealed itself in a model of unity and in the cohesion of a nation. It preserved stability, thus deserving the confidence of the citizens who found in it a source of security and reassurance, and a guarantee of unification and sovereignty.
When dangers threaten the country, the Army remains its security valve, and the strong nucleus of its national unity. It is from its entire land and for its entire land; it is from its entire nation and for its entire nation; and it cannot be any different because it is united with its people, by fate, by destiny and by blood.
What our army is doing inside the country, it can also do it on the borders, if its technical capabilities are reinforced, and if it is trained on the proper methods for the potential types of eventual fights that may be faced in the future. The State shoulders the responsibility to prepare the army in effective and equipment because nations can only be protected by their own sons.

My Fellow soldiers,
Independence remains the greatest embezzlement trusted in you. It is an oath you took to defend the country and scarify yourselves for it, till redemption. Never hesitate to cry out: Here we are, Lebanon!

My Fellow Lebanese,
I have always addressed you as “the Great People of Lebanon” because I believe in the greatness of a nation who rise from the wreckage of their demolished homes, shake their face off the dust, roll up their sleeves, and embark on laying the bricks all over again.
Today, the bricks of the nation need to be laid, and I am confident that your arms, which never spared any effort in difficult times, will no more be gained over by weariness or weakness.

The hopes you have placed around this presidential term are high, as high as your sacrifices, sufferings and expectations. And as we have gone down this road together, together we shall complete it;
Therefore, prepare your arms for the time has come to build the nation.
The construction workshop needs everyone, and its advantages shall touch upon everyone.

Long Live Lebanon.