BEIRUT: As Parliament is scheduled to meet to extend its mandate this week, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea Sunday ruled out the election of a new president soon, linking the presidency issue to regional bargaining.
Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, meanwhile, warned against attempts to change the country’s power-sharing system between Muslims and Christians in favor of a tripartite formula between Christians, Sunnis and Shiites.
For his part, Speaker Nabih Berri said he was waiting for the major Christian blocs to outline their final stances on the extension of Parliament’s term ahead of the voting session set for Wednesday.
Berri, according to visitors, said that quorum for the session as well as the voting on two draft laws to extend the deadline for an electoral law and extend Parliament’s mandate were secured.
But the speaker strongly upholds the need for a constitutional, particularly Christian, vote on the two draft laws, the visitors quoted Berri as saying.
Berri scheduled a legislative session for Nov. 5 to vote on a number of bills, including one that would extend Parliament’s mandate for two years and seven months.
The country’s major Christian parties, the Free Patriotic Movement, the Kataeb Party and the Lebanese Forces, have spoken out against the extension, but it is unlikely that their members will boycott the session.
In an interview with Reuters at his home in Maarab, north of Beirut, Geagea said: “This goes beyond Lebanon. The issue of the Lebanese presidency is on the table for discussion in the bargaining over the entire Middle East. Therefore, unfortunately, I don’t see a presidential election in the foreseeable future. We are waiting.”
Parliament last week failed over a lack of quorum for the 14th time in more than five months to pick a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure ended on May 25.
Geagea, the March 14-backed candidate for the presidency, renewed his call on his Christian political archfoe, MP Michel Aoun, for talks to agree on a consensus president as a way to break the five-month-long deadlock.
“I call on Gen. Aoun to reach an agreement with us on a third candidate,” Geagea said.
But he added: “I do not see Gen. Aoun changing his political decision to obstruct the presidential election. He will not retreat.”
Geagea along with March 14 parties have accused Aoun and Hezbollah of scuttling the presidential vote by boycotting Parliament sessions to elect a president.
Aoun, viewed as the March 8 alliance’s candidate for the country’s top Christian post, and Hezbollah have repeatedly called on their March 14 rivals to reach an agreement on a consensus president acceptable to both sides.
Geagea, who led a powerful Christian militia during Lebanon’s 1975-90 Civil War, ruled out the outbreak of renewed strife despite the nearly 4-year-old civil war in Syria and sectarian violence in Iraq.
“With everything that is going on in the region, look at Lebanon, it is holding together,” said Geagea, 62. “There is a political decision by all the factions not to play with Lebanon’s civil peace, and not to play with Lebanon’s existence as a nation,” he said.
“But unfortunately they don’t believe in this decision to the degree necessary to establish an effective state in Lebanon,” he said.
“So Lebanon as a nation will remain, and civil peace will remain, albeit with the current disturbances that you see. I am not more worried than that.”
Geagea, whose Lebanese Forces party opposes the extension of Parliament’s mandate, warned of attempts by some to push the country toward a full constitutional vacuum that would set the stage for a new ruling system in Lebanon.
“We are entirely against operating in these circumstances because it would throw Lebanon into the unknown,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rai reiterated his call on Parliament to quickly elect a president, while warning against any attempt to change the power-sharing system between Muslims and Christians to a tripartite formula between Christians, Sunnis and Shiites.
“We appeal to the political groups and the public authority in Lebanon to respect the Constitution, the National Pact and its applicable formula [on equal power sharing between Muslims and Christians],” Rai said during Sunday’s Mass in the St. Charbel Church in Sydney, Australia.
“We also call on Parliament to quickly elect a president as stipulated by the Constitution. Parliament should have elected since last March 25 the only Christian president in the entire Middle East who guarantees Christian-Muslim coexistence in Lebanon,” Rai said.
The Maronite patriarch added that the president is the one who “guarantees the people’s unity ... and enhances the formula of partnership in governance and administration and equality between Christians and Muslims.”
Rai warned the government and Parliament against violating the Constitution and the National Pact that guaranteed equal rights and representation for both Muslims and Christians with calls for “a constituent assembly” to set up a new system or a tripartite power-sharing formula between Sunnis, Shiites and Christians.
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