By Sami Haddad
The term of outgoing president Michel Aoun will soon expire , October 31, to be exact , and for this reason the talk of the town in Lebanon is who will be the next president
Political bloc and influential figures in Lebanon started to publicly announce their own specifications for the next president , along with the list of their preferred candidates.
The only problem is that the president of Lebanon may not be decided by the Lebanese as history has shown. Many regional and world powers have a lot of influence on who should be Lebanon’s president .
This however does not stop the Lebanese politicians from having wish lists and specifications
The presidential election requires the attendance of two thirds of the 128-member parliament to meet the desired quorum. A candidate is declared a winner after securing over two thirds of votes in the first round.
But the parliament is so divided it is almost impossible for any candidate to win from first round , regardless who that may be . This is why discussions between various political blocs and foreign powers usually take place behind the scene way before the elections to agree on a consensus candidate that could garner the support of at least half the parliament .
According to the constitution the president should not only be Christian , but should be a Maronite Christian . The same goes for the 2 other top positions in Lebanon. The Prime minister should not only be Muslim but should be a Sunni Muslim. and the speaker should not only be Muslim but should be a Shiite Moslem .
The other Christian and Muslim sects (15) have no chance of ever making it to any of the top positions , this is the reason why the new breed of reformist MPS are calling for an end to political sectarianism,
This restriction also limits the choice of a qualified new president even from the sect itself specially since Lebanon is so tiny
Lebanon is divided between those who support Hezbollah and its arms and those who want an end Hezbollah’s domination .
Hezbollah was created by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 1982 as part of its Quds foreign force. Iran has been funding , training and arming Hezbollah ever since and in return, Hezbollah has been acting as Iran’s proxy in destabilizing the Middle East , from acting as Irani’s occupier of Lebanon, to helping the Syrian dictator in his war against the opposition and supporting the Iran backed militia group in Iraq and backing the Iran backed Houthi rebels in Yemen , to drowning the Arab Gulf countries with smuggled drugs that are made in Syria near the Lebanese borders
The creation of Hezbollah as a resistance movement against Israel was initially welcomed by Israel in 1982 , because Hezbollah ended up replacing the Palestinian resistance groups alongside the border who were giving Israel a hard time .
At the end of the 1975, 1990 civil war a settlement was reached in Taif Saudi Arabia , which is referred to the Taif Accord . The accord stipulated that all militias should hand over their arms and ammunition to the Lebanese army , but Hezbollah refused to hand over its arms claiming that it needs them for resistance against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
Israel withdrew from Lebanon over 22 years ago in May 2000 but Hezbollah never handed its arms to the Lebanese army . It claims that it wants to liberate the Shebaa farms which are Syrian and part of the occupied Golan heights . In the 1967 war with Syria Israel occupied the Golan heights.
Instead of resisting against Israel Hezbollah has pointed its guns internally against the Lebanese people and has been using its arms to protect the corrupt ruling class . Hezbollah claims to have over 100, 000 fighters almost double the size of the Lebanese army and over 150, 000 rockets .
In Lebanon Hezbollah now controls all the branches of government , the presidency (Thru its ally president Michel Aoun) , the parliament thru its ally speaker Nabih Berri) and has been the force behind the inability of PM designate Najib Mikati in forming a cabinet ever since he was designated as PM .
The other side in Lebanon is not as united as Hezbollah and its allies, while some want to get rid completely of Hezbollah, others want to coexist at various degrees and devised their own terms for coexistence .
While some want a pro Western president others want a neutral one.
Some of Change MPs, the Lebanese Forces and Phalanage party are calling for a sovereign president , meaning a figure who is not affiliated with Iran – and supports the independence of the judiciary, which they view as the foundation of any state seeking transparency and accountability and that wants to combat corruption.
On the other hand the Progressive Socialist Party ( PSP) called for dialogue with Hezbollah, wants its armed wing to be integrated into the Lebanese army and agrees with Hezbollah that Lebanon should not be a neutral country as far as Israel is concerned .
While the Lebanese Forces which has the largest bloc in the parliament and which considers its leader Samir Geagea as natural presidential candidate declared its support for the army chief General Joseph Aoun , the phalange and some reform MPs on the other hand want a president who is civilian .
PSP leader Walid Jumblatt on the other hand is willing to support one of Hezbollah ‘s undeclared candidate, Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh, a close ally of Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad and grandson of former president Suleiman Franjieh who invited the Syrians to come to Lebanon in 1976 to fight the Palestinians and their Lebanese allies. Jumblatt’s father former minister Kamal Jumblatt who was assassinated by the Syrian regime in 1977 led the National Movement during the civil war and was the top ally of the Palestinian Liberation organization
The influential Lebanon Maronite patriarch Beshara Boutos Rai wants a president that is completely neutral . The media announced his list of preferred candidates on Tuesday and here they are :
- Ziad Baroud , who served as the minister of interior and municipalities, considered to be one of the most powerful positions in the country, from 2008 to 2011 for two consecutive cabinets PM Fouad Siniora and PM Saad Hariri
- Roger Dib , who was appointed in March 1991 ( at the end of the civil war) as a Minster of State . He is the founder of Near East Consulting Group (NECG). Prior to founding his own firm, he served for several years as a consultant at Mckinsey & Company Inc., an International Management Consulting Firm.
- Jihad Azour, an economist and politician, he served as Lebanon’s minister of finance under PM Fouad Saniora‘s government from 2005 to 2008. He is currently the Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund ( IMF) where he oversees the Fund’s work in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Caucasus.
According to media reports all the candidates are qualified according to Rai but Azour is on top of his list for president primarily because of his powerful position at IMF ,an organization Lebanon is counting on for recovering from its financial collapse .
Woman president ?
The Lebanese media has been reporting about the possibility of having a woman as president . The names of 3 Lebanese woman have been circulating as possible candidate .
Myrna Emile Bustani (85 ) a Lebanese businesswoman, philanthropist, socialite and former parliamentarian. has been mentioned as the leading woman candidate . She is the daughter of Emile Bustani, a well known businessman and former member of the Lebanese parliament who was killed in a plane crash in 1963. She was the first woman to ever serve in the Lebanese parliament (1963-1964) after she replaced her father in the parliament following his death . Bustani is a well known contributor towards cultural events in Lebanon and a patron of the arts. She is a chairperson of the Al Bustan International Festival in Lebanon.
MP Sethrida Geagea , wife of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. She has been a member of the parliament since 2005
Cluadine Aoun, daughter of president Aoun and wife of retired army general and a former MP Chamel Roukoz who has been very critical of his brother-in-law Gebran Bassil ( who is married to Aoun’s other daughter Chantal) , Roukoz withdrew from the FPM’s Strong Lebanon parliamentary bloc in 2019 following the October revolution whom he opnely supported
Hezbollah‘s candidate
The Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group has not yet officially announced its candidate . Hezbollah is close to its ally the Free Patriotic Movement, whose founder is president Aoun and whose current leader is Gebran Bassil , Aoun’s son-in-law . The party has also close ties to the Marada movement leader , Suleiman Franjieh
The media in Lebanon is speculating that Hezbollah will decide on Franjieh, reportedly because Bassil has no chance of being accepted by any of Hezbollah’s rivals or even most of its allies
In general the president is expected to enjoy “internal political consensus”, and be able to address the international community and put Lebanon “on the right track to recovery”, something Aoun failed miserably to do primarily because of his close association with Hezbollah
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 1500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar since 1997 and the most recent parallel market rate was over 30,000LL to the dollar.There were unconfirmed reports yesterday 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 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
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 the aging Aoun ( 87) may decide to stay put in Baabda if no replacement is elected before his term expires, which could lead to another civil war
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.