Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Prime Minister Tammam Salam Tuesday warned that the yearlong presidential vacuum is threatening the country’s existence, as Christian March 14 lawmakers lobbied for the Maronite patriarch’s support to reduce the quorum required for an electoral Parliament session. The development came a day after Lebanon marked the one-year anniversary of the presidential vacuum with no solution in sight amid Parliament’s repeated failure since April last year to choose a president over a lack of quorum.
Addressing the Lebanese on the one-year anniversary of the presidential deadlock, Salam warned that the continued vacuum in the top Christian post put the country’s very existence into jeopardy and caused heavy damage to Lebanon’s sectarian coexistence formula.
He also warned that the repeated thwarting of a Parliament session by the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance to elect a president has plunged the country into “a grave political and economic path.”
“The continued vacancy in the presidency seat does not only weaken the political system, but it also threatens the national entity itself and causes heavy damage to Lebanon’s formula of coexistence and [Muslim-Christian] partnership,” Salam said in a televised speech.
“It is no longer permissible for political life in Lebanon to remain on hold. It is no longer permissible for the Lebanese to remain prisoners in a room waiting for the results of regional wars,” he said. “Dangers hanging over Lebanon as a result of the fire raging in our neighborhood do not allow us the luxury of indulging in endless political polarization.”
“The supreme national interest, which must be the goal of everyone, calls for immediately going to a consensual solution [to end] the vacuum crisis and quickly elect a president,” Salam added.
The premier stressed that consensus among the rival factions is inevitable to end the presidential crisis. “Any other solution that reflects the dominance of one side over the other is a recipe for a bigger and more dangerous crisis,” he said.
“The application of the Constitution, which is a sacred national duty, by electing a president, will restore respect to the mechanism of democratic action stipulated by the Constitution and serve as a gateway to the return of political and economic recovery to the country,” Salam said.
Salam said Lebanon’s image in the world had been greatly harmed as a result of the presidential vacuum. “Lebanon appeared as an impotent state, thus unfortunately enhancing the argument of those who say that the Lebanese are unable to deal with their affairs by themselves and that they always need a sponsor to propose solutions for their problems,” he said.
Parliament failed on May 13 in its 23rd consecutive session since April last year to elect a president over a lack of quorum, prompting Speaker Nabih Berri to schedule a new session for June 3.
Lawmakers from MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc, Hezbollah MPs and their March 8 allies have been blamed for thwarting a quorum by boycotting parliamentary sessions.
Salam said the failure to elect a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year mandate ended on May 25 last year, has caused “a big flaw” in the work of constitutional institutions and paralyzed Parliament legislation. He warned that Lebanon might lose many projects funded by international institutions if relevant draft laws are not approved by Parliament.
Meanwhile, some 29 Christian lawmakers, mainly from the March 14 coalition, met with Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai to seek his support for attempts to reduce the quorum required to hold a Parliament session to elect a president from two-thirds of the 128-member legislature to 50 percent plus one. The move seeks to undermine a March 8 boycott of the presidential electoral sessions.
“The meeting highlighted the importance of respecting the Constitution with regard to the presidential election and rejecting the continued vacuum in the presidency post because it puts Lebanon and Christians at risk,” Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb said after the meeting in Bkirki, the seat of the Maronite Church.
Harb said the meeting decided to form a committee that would discuss with Berri the possibility of changing the quorum rules.
However, Berri appeared to be apathetic to the March 14 proposal.
Asked to comment on the March 14 proposal, Berri was quoted by visitors at his Ain al-Tineh residence as saying: “We are in a democratic country. No comment.” He added that the clarification issued by Bkirki did not support the proposal.
Berri recalled that Parliament’s Secretariat had decided in March last year that a two-third quorum is required for all sessions to elect a president.
Currently, a 50 percent plus one vote is required to elect a president in Parliament in the second round of voting, but two-thirds of the lawmakers are required for a quorum to convene the session.
That hasn’t happened since the first round of voting in April 2014 when no candidate captured the two-thirds vote they needed to win the election for that round.
The parliamentary Future bloc denounced what it called Hezbollah’s “continued hijacking” of the presidency by upholding its support for “a single candidate,” in a clear reference to Aoun.
Implicitly referring to Aoun’s presidential initiative, which called for the election of a president directly by the people in two phases, first by the Christians and at a later stage by all the Lebanese, the bloc said in a statement after its weekly meeting: “Some have made proposals that need constitutional amendments which cannot be discussed amid the presidential vacuum.”
Separately, Aoun refused to say what he would do if the government extended the mandates of Army commander Gen. Jean Kahwagi, who retires on Sept. 23, and Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Basbous, whose term ends on June 5. Aoun is campaigning for his son-in-law, Brig. Shamel Roukoz, the head of the Army Commando Unit, to replace Kahwagi as Army commander.
“The government is not dealing with me as a partner. I want to behave the way I want in order to attain partnership. I will take my rights in spite of them,” Aoun said in an interview with OTV channel Tuesday night.
Aoun said he had agreed with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri during a dinner hosted by the latter in February on the appointment of Roukoz as Army commander and the appointment of Brig. Gen. Imad Othman or Brig. Gen. Samir Shehadeh as chief of the Internal Security Forces.
“But the agreement was stalled when the other [March 14] side accused Speaker Berri of obstructing it,” Aoun said.
Aoun added that negative reactions made by March 14 officials to his initiative to break the presidential deadlock reflected “mass stupidity or bad intentions,” saying his proposal did not require Constitutional ammendment.