Retired top Security official General Khaled Hemaded predicted Monday during an interview that the outgoing and aging Lebanese president Michel Aoun ( 87) is not planning to leave the Baabda presidential palace when his term expires on October 31, 2022 and it only took one day for his predictions to come true . Hamadeh predicted that Aoun will repeat the 1988 scenario
On 22 September 1988, 15 minutes before the expiration of his term, the outgoing president Amine Gemayel appointed Aoun as Prime Minister, heading a military government formed by six members of the Martial Court, three of which were Christian and three were Muslims.
The legitimacy of this appointment was disputed, however, because it violated the 1943 National Pact, an unwritten agreement among Lebanon’s confessional communities whereby the prime minister must be Sunni Muslim.
The interim government of Salim al-Hoss, who had been appointed as caretaker after former PM Rashid Karami’s assassination, insisted that it remained in charge. Lebanon was left with two governments, Aoun’s government in East Beirut and Hoss’s government in West Beirut.
Aoun has been making it extremely difficult for Caretaker PM Najib Mikati to form a new cabinet after he was designated by the parliament .
Aoun’s Free patriotic Movement confirmed Wednesday General Hamade’s prediction.
A senior Free Patriotic Movement official was quoted as saying by al-Akhbar newspaper , a Hezbollah linked daily
“We will not accept, in any way, the remaining of the caretaker cabinet should we reach presidential vacuum, and we will not accept the scheme of Speaker Nabih Berri and PM-designate Najib Mikati that is based on ambiguous constitutional edicts.”
Speaker Berri has been trying to find a way to avoid the repetition of the 1988 scenario in case a president is not elected before Aoun’s term expires .
“The choices are open before us, topped by the choice which neither us nor President Aoun want, which is his staying at the presidential palace, should Mikati fail to form a government before that,” the official added.
Another FPM official was quoted as saying by the daly:
“Aoun has two other options”.
“The first is revoking Mikati’s designation and inviting parliament to new consultations to pick another premier who can form a government quickly, although this option needs a Sunni partner and may spark a crisis with the Sunni community,” .
“There is also a choice for him to follow the example of (former) president Amin Gemayel, ” as mentioned above
Aoun remained at the Baabda palace till he was defeated by the Syrian army in 1989, when he fled to the French embassy in his pajamas
Under Aoun everything collapsed in Lebanon
Under Aoun Lebanon defaulted for the first time on its public debt
Under Aoun the Lebanese currency collapsed and lost more than 95 % of its value . The exchange rate was set at about 1500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar since 1997 and the most recent parallel market rate was over 35,000LL to the dollar.There were unconfirmed reports claiming that caretaker PM Mikati is expecting the dollar to shoot up to 60,000 LL within 2 months if no government is formed
Under Aoun 4 in five Lebanese were declared as below the poverty level by the UN
Under Aoun bread , fuel and and medicine became a luxury that the average Lebanese could no longer afford .
Under Aoun the government owned utility company ( EDL) could only provide 2 hours a day of electricity and the Lebanese were forced to purchase power from privately owned power generators at exorbitant prices, despite the fact that all the ministers of energy were members of his FPM party for the past decade and most of the deficit ( $60 billion) was due to the corruption at the FPM-led EDL
Under Aoun the depositors in the Lebanese banks could no longer access their bank accounts while the politicians were able to transfer billions to their foreign accounts with the full knowledge of the Central Bank .
Under Aoun the Beirut Port witnessed the largest ever non-nuclear explosion that killed over 220 people wounded over 7000 destroyed a huge section of Beirut and left 300, 000 homeless. Hezbollah reportedly illegally imported and stored 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate to supply the Syrian regime with this explosive for its barrel bombs that it used to kill Syrian civilians . Aoun was warned about the possibility of an explosion 2 weeks before it happened but did nothing about it
Under Aoun Lebanon witnessed the exodus of hundreds of thousands of highly educated Lebanese professionals who were seeking better living conditions elsewhere
Aoun’s memorandum of understand that he signed with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in February 2006 landed him the presidency , but reportedly it also led to the collapse of Lebanon as a sovereign country and made it a colony of Iran.
Who will be Lebanon’s next president is anybody’s guess. The biggest concern the Lebanese people have is that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah , who has been the de-facto ruler of Lebanon for the past 6 years , may ( because the opposition is so disunited ) replace Aoun with a similar president whose total loyalty is to Hezbollah and Iran, not Lebanon .
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