As Hezbollah's veto holds up Lebanon’s presidential election, Gen Aoun might benefit from the Azour-Frangieh stalemate
Lebanon’s National Assembly meets tomorrow to elect a new head of state eight months after the last one left office. The two main rivals cancel each other out, reducing their chance to win. France’s former foreign minister is expected in Beirut next week to boost the general's candidacy.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Lebanon’s National Assembly is set to meet tomorrow in Beirut to pick a new president eight months after the last one left office. Barring any last-minute surprise, the session is not likely to succeed.
The two rival candidates, Jihad Azour and Suleiman Frangieh are expected at best to get 50-55 votes and 43-45 votes respectively.
A former finance minister (2005-2008), Mr Azour currently, heads the IMF’S Middle East and Central Asia department, and is a compromise candidate supported by Christian parties and Walid Jumblatt’s Druze bloc. Mr Frangieh is backed by Shia parties (Hezbollah and Amal), his own Marada party (4 MPs), and pro-Syrian MPs.
Both candidates are far from the 85 votes (two thirds in the 128-seat National Assembly) needed to be elected in the first round of voting.
According to various reports, a second round is not expected, either because the speaker will adjourn the session on some pretext, or the MPs voting for Frangieh will walk out, depriving the house of its two-thirds quorum needed under the constitution.
Indeed, sources suggest that the two Shia parties will not take any chance that Azour might win in a second round when only 50+1 per cent (65 votes) will be needed.
Although the numbers are not there, secret dealings may have been made to reach this number, involving the assembly’s "soft underbelly”, most notably two groups, one formed by independent, mostly Sunni MPs, and the other by protest MPs. At the same, five Free Patriotic Movement MPs might not vote for Azour and leave the ballot blank.
Even if nothing comes from tomorrow’s vote, it will be totally different from the 11 that preceded it after President Michel Aoun left office on 31 October 2022.
It will mark a hardening of battle lines between Hezbollah, the leading Shia party, and the groups that want to end its hegemony, whose core is now formed by the major Christian parties – the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb party – who together hold 80 per cent of the 64 seats assigned to Lebanon’s Christian community. For its part, the Maronite Patriarchate did not express any preference.
This new political phase risks ushering more deadlock and tensions. Stripped of the precious "Christian cover" provided by the FPM, Hezbollah will stand out more clearly as an intransigent and, according to its opponents, "totalitarian" party.
This is clearly evinced by its unequivocal and unexplained rejection of Azour’s candidacy, deemed by the Shia party as a figure of "confrontation, challenge and submission”.
On the advice of the Vatican and France, the Maronite patriarch had tried to convince Hezbollah to accept the senior IMF official as a compromise candidate, through his emissary, the Maronite Archbishop Boulos (Paul) Abdel Sater of Beirut.
Similarly, the international financial community had reacted favourably to Azour’s candidacy, cognisant that Lebanon cannot recover from its systemic economic crisis without IMF advice and guidance.
In addition to numbers, tomorrow's battle will also be one of "national legitimacy". Regardless of their final scores, both Suleiman Frangieh and Jihad Azour are losers.
In fact, “There is no legitimacy to any authority contradicting the charter of coexistence,” reads the preamble to Lebanon’s Constitution. Frangieh enjoys some Christian legitimacy while Azour has no legitimacy among the 27 Shia MPs.
The risk is that Suleiman Frangieh and Jihad Azour will not be able to go beyond the votes they already have. French President Emmanuel Macron has understood this. For this reason, he has named former Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian as his emissary to Lebanon in lieu of his Africa Middle East advisor Patrick Durel.
Le Drian is expected in Beirut next week. Will luck smile on General Joseph Aoun, Commander of Lebanon's Armed Forces? Or on two new possible candidates, Neemat Frem o Ziyad Baroud? While the wheel is still turning, Hezbollah's veto still threatens to jam it once again.
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17/05/2022 20:06
