These two divisions inevitably lead to a stalemate whose repercussions and dangers are feared under the pretext of “necessities permitting prohibitions”: What if, at the last moments, someone new to raise their voice and tone and adhere to Aoun’s stay in office if a successor could not be elected within the constitutional deadline?
More than once, on more than one occasion, the President of the Republic said that he would leave Baabda Palace at the zero hour for the end of his term. Until a short time ago, almost all parties treated this position as categorical, final and inevitable. The constitutional mandate according to Article 49 is six full years, not less than a minute or more than a minute. As for the alternative to not electing a new president, Article 62 is to delegate his powers to the Council of Ministers as a whole. Although the constitution, with its effective provisions, finds solutions to impasses, and it is assumed that it does not cause them, in the end, in terms of what was not wanted or intended for it, it creates obstacles and precedents.
Under the Taif Agreement, Article 49 was breached three times in less than three decades where it is believed that it will not be breached: the extension of two successive presidents’ terms in 1995 and 2004 and the election of a third president against its terms in 2008. On those three occasions, exigencies permitted prohibitions. But on the shoulders of the authority who is able to impose and define it is the “higher interest.”
There is no evidence that the country is on the verge of a more complex and innovative stage of dilemmas, from a few facts that are being discussed in private and in public:
The first is that a resigned government, albeit under the name of the caretaker government, to give what little remains of its legitimacy to its work, the powers of the President of the Republic after the end of the current president’s term, does not have general acceptance in advance. Article 62 does not grant a resigned government the highest constitutional position in the country, nor do the parties with wide influence in the process of agreeing to take over the rule of the country – albeit collectively – at a stage of local and regional benefits that do not tolerate leniency and turn a blind eye. Add a new argument, which Aoun mentioned a few months ago, which is that he will not be delivered into a vacuum. He later reiterated that he would leave the presidency after the end of his term, without linking his departure to what followed. The complementary argument to that is that a void is not submitted to a void that preceded it. It is the first necessity that permits prohibitions.
Second, the President of the Republic is not alone in rejecting the President-designate’s draft of the new government. Hezbollah joined him in rejecting it, especially its nomination of a new minister, Walid Sinno, for the energy portfolio, around which the party has doubts and mistrust, which Mikati later expressed his willingness to abandon. Then came the July 4 statement issued by Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah Bu Habib criticizing Hezbollah’s launch of three marches and repudiating any responsibility for them, in order to double the party’s suspicions and fears of Mikati at the gates of a new stage that he is supposed to be leading, in the constitutional deadline for electing the new president. or afterwards.
It is also clear, in everyone’s mind, especially Hezbollah, that the president-designate is currently one of the strongest players, and not necessarily the only one. No one but him is prime minister, resigned or working, and no one can do without him. On the other hand, no one is able to refer him to the image that Mikati does not want for himself.
Do the two merits fall under the section “Necessities allow prohibitions”?
The third is the ambiguity of the fateful regional outcomes that make Hezbollah wait to accept its fateful Lebanese counterpart, such as the presidency, as well as to reject any fait accompli imposed on it in the management of power in Lebanon during these times. This applies to any new government that does not give him reassurance. He had received a few negative signals from the President-designate, which had just brought him into the midst of his confrontation. The result of this is that the powers of the President of the Republic will not be transferred to a caretaker government when a vacancy occurs, either by preventing its meeting by withdrawing ministers loyal to the Shiite duo and its allies and the Free Patriotic Movement, or by keeping the President of the Republic in Baabda Palace. There is also an additional necessity that permits prohibitions.
Fourth, the sudden appearance of unexpected steps at this time, not closely or directly related to the two merits, but it is significant that paves the way for other sudden steps. Among them is what has been reported in closed councils about the efforts made by Representative Gebran Bassil to remove him from OFAC sanctions. It is said that it takes three or four months to crystallize it, which calls for delay in electing a new president. The irony is that this step coincided with information that stated that the file of the “representative of the republic” Jihad al-Arab, who is in turn punished by the American organization, is about to be closed, especially since the accusations brought against him and for whom he was punished are financially related to corruption, which turns the settlement into a financial aspect. Danny Khoury’s file is in place. As for the most surprising thing, it is information that MP Ali Hassan Al-Khalil, who has also been punished since September 8, 2020, assigned the law firm to defend him to the US authorities with an initial sum of one and a half million dollars.