Why Lebanon Cannot Elect a President

Update (November 17): For the 6th time in a row, the coward FPM slaves of Hezbollah were so afraid of the turbaned, bearded Captagon Chief that they once again dropped blank votes at this 6th session to elect a president. They insist on violating the constitution by walking out of session just before the mandatory second round, thus breaking the fallacious 2/3d quorum imposed by their ally, Speaker Nabih Berri, and following him and his Syrian and Iranian sponsors like pathetic dogs. They claim to want to protect Christian rights, while elevating Shiite Muslim abuses of the country to new heights.

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At the fifth session today (November 10) of the Lebanese parliament, no president was elected. This is likely to go on for several weeks and months as has become the practice in Lebanese politics. Here's why:

- The opposition parties (Lebanese Forces, Kataeb, and others) have named a candidate since the first session, Michel Mouawad. They have voted for him at every one of the previous presidential election sessions. Between sessions, they try to convince independents and others to join them and vote for Mouawad.

For background, Michel Mouawad's father, René Mouawad was assassinated in November 1989, 18 days into his presidential term, probably by Syrian Intelligence, like all other political assassinations in Lebanon. Anyone in Lebanon who doesn't submit to the diktat of Damascus becomes a pending target. The 1988-1990 time frame was one of battles between those who wanted to rid Lebanon of the Syrian occupation and those who submitted to, and collaborated with, the Syrian occupier. In the end, the Syrians won and their occupation persisted until 2005. So candidate Michel Mouawad is considered "anti-Syrian", which explains why the pro-Syrian loyalist camp is against him and is doing everything it can to scuttle his election, as is described below.

- The loyalists (Hezbollah, Aoun & Bassil's FPM....) drop a blank vote in the ballot box every time. They have no candidate because they know they'll lose if they field a candidate. They keep calling for "dialogue" and for a "consensus" president. For the past 30+ years, no dialogue has ever yielded any result since Lebanon's establishment politicians began holding dialogues as a way to go around constitutional provisions. And for the past 30+ years, every "consensus" president elected has been a failure.

Here are the many ways that the dinosaur Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, who is in the loyalist camp, violates the constitution at every one of these sessions:  

Per the constitution, 

1) Once the current presidential term ends, Parliament becomes a de facto electoral body (and is prohibited from serving as a legislative body) that should remain in permanent session until it elects a new president; and 

2) When the session to elect a president is convened, and assuming a quorum, a first round of voting takes place. If a candidate gets 2/3d of the vote, he becomes president and the election is over. If no candidate gets 2/3d of the vote in the first round, a second round (and more rounds, if necessary) is immediately and automatically held in which whoever gets 51% becomes president.

This is not happening as we speak. What is happening is that Berri calls for a session of Parliament to elect a president. In the past 5 sessions so far, a quorum is achieved, a first round is held, opposition candidate Mouawad gets anywhere from 40 to 50 votes (out of total of 128 MPs), which is not the 2/3d required in that first round. Hezbollah and Bassil-Aoun's loyalist camp votes with blank or frivolous votes. But here, instead of the Speaker immediately holding a second round for a 51% majority ballot, he instructs his allies (Hezbollah and Aoun-Bassil) to walk out of the session, killing the quorum and with it the second round of voting. The Speaker then adjourns the session and calls for another session to be held a week later. And so it goes, week after week, another one of these months or years on end during which Lebanon remains without a president or without a government. THIS IS WHY LEBANON IS A FAILED STATE. Unlike normal democracies, Lebanese democracy is one in which the players of both camps do not play the game; instead, they argue over the rules and tamper with them. Instead of discussing the substance of the problems facing the country, the politicians spend their time arguing over the rules they themselves established and swore to upheld.

By "consensus" president, the loyalists mean someone who is no one, someone who usually may be an otherwise professionally qualified individual but who is politically weak, without political or popular backing, someone they can manipulate and impose conditions on. The loyalists do not want an independent president who is likely to confront them and confront Syria's continued grip over the country. 

The whole "consensus" paradigm of the Lebanese political class - broadly referred to as "consensual democracy" - is a charade of democracy. Simply put, people vote for their representatives from all camps, including most prominently the loyalist and opposition camps. But then, instead of whoever wins forms a government, and whoever loses becomes the opposition, the loyalists and opposition politicians sit down and form a government together. Such governments never work. They are not to be confused with what genuine democracies know as "coalition governments"; Lebanese consensual governments are not coalition governments formed over a compromise over policies, they are an aberration. If one camp makes a proposition, the other camp blocks it, and so no decisions are made at the level of the government. ANOTHER REASON WHY LEBANON IS A FAILED STATE.

Furthermore, and regardless of whether the Lebanese constitution as enacted in the Taef Agreement of 1989 allows it, the norm has been set to allow a member of parliament to be a government minister AT THE SAME TIME, which is a ridiculous and common practice in Lebanese politics. So imagine the conflicts of interests inside such a political system: Both opposition and loyalists sit in the same government, which means that the opposition is not really an opposition anymore; AND those MPs who become ministers in the government are supposed to hold themselves accountable for their own failures. This is how the Lebanese political establishment operates, and this why Lebanon is a failed state, rife with corruption and abuse of power.

Back in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, Lebanon was a normal country with clearly defined prerogatives and responsibilities between the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judiciary, AND these responsibilities were actually enforced under the law, such that decisions could be made quickly and executed. That was before the Taef Agreement. When the Muslims of the country won the 1975-1990 War with the backing of the Americans, the Europeans, the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Libyans, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and every other f----- Arab, European, and Asian mercenary and terrorist they could find, the Taef Agreement was signed as a new constitution in 1989. In this new constitution, the head of the Executive - the Christian President - was castrated, became a figurehead, and his responsibilities distributed to the Muslim Prime Minister and the Muslim Speaker. As a result, the country became governed by a three-headed monster with conflicting and overlapping authorities such that no decisions could be made. Each of the three "presidents" created his own domain, his own mini-state rife with corruption, clientelism, cronyism and nepotism. For instance, there are numerous "security forces" bodies in Lebanon, each belonging to each of the three "presidents": Internal Security, General Security, State Security. After 30+ years of Syrian occupation, Lebanon's Muslims essentially cloned the Syrian Baathist model of governance. And to add insult to injury, the new Muslim rulers exercised - Islam oblige - a specific practice in which they surrender to God's will every decision they are incapable of assuming themselves - Inshallah (God willing) is a phrase you hear all the time from the mouths of Muslim MPs and Ministers. It's all in God's hands anyway, so why bother trying to improve people's lives? This is why personal and collective responsibility is more lacking among Lebanon's Muslim communities than in its Christian communities.