page_title: Arab Democratic Party (Lebanon)
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Arab Democratic Party (Lebanon) / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Mr. Ali Eid
context_page_description: The Arab Democratic Party – ADP or Parti Démocratique Arabe in French, is a Lebanese political party, based at Tripoli, in the Akkar District of northern Lebanon. Its current leader is Rifaat Eid.
context_section_description: The ADP traced back its origins to an earlier leftist students' organization called the Alawite Youth Movement – AYM (Arabic: حركة الشباب العلوي | Harakat al-Shabab al-Alawiyya) or Mouvement de la Jeunesse Alaouite (MJA) in French, originally formed in 1972 at Tripoli by Ali Eid, a former teacher. As its name implies, the AYM drew its support from the Shia Alawite minority sect of Lebanon, even receiving the personal backing of Rifa'at al-Assad, Syria’s vice-president at the time and himself a member of that sect.  During the early war years, the AYM kept itself outside the LNM-PLO alliance, but in 1977–78 the movement joined the Patriotic Opposition Front – POF (Arabic: جبهة المعارضة الوطنية | Jabhat al-Muearadat al-Wataniyya), a pro-Syrian multiconfessional coalition of Lebanese notables and activists founded in Tripoli by the MP Talal El-Merhebi (elected in 1972), Souhale Hamadah, Rashid Al-Muadim, George Mourani, and Nassib Al-Khatib, with Ali Eid being elected vice-president of the new formation.
  However, internal disagreements soon led to the dissolution of the alliance at the early 1980s, when Eid and some of its ex-coalition partners went to form in 1982 the ADP, choosing the Sunni Muslim lawyer Nassib Al-Khatib as their first Secretary-General, later replaced by Ali Eid in 1985. In the process, the AYM was absorbed into the new party and became its youth branch.
caption: Ali Eid in 2008
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