Jumblatt to postpone resignation

BEIRUT: MP Walid Jumblatt decided to postpone his resignation to May at the request of Speaker Nabih Berri after a meeting between the two leaders earlier this week, a source close to the Amal Movement leader said.

Speaking to The Daily Star Friday, the source said Berri told Jumblatt, a lawmaker for Chouf and leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, that the time was not appropriate right now for his resignation, which would entail holding a by-election to fill his post.

The source said Jumblatt responded positively to Berri’s request.

Berri, who received Jumblatt at his Ain al-Tineh residence, voiced his hopes that the security and political situation in Lebanon would become better by May.

The presidential seat has been vacant since last May and the country is facing rising threats from jihadi groups holed up on the northeastern border with Syria.

This month alone there was a twin suicide bombing in Tripoli claimed by the Nusra Front and an attack by Islamist militants on Army posts on the outskirts of the village of Ras Baalbek in northeast Lebanon.

The country has postponed general elections twice starting May 2013 citing deteriorating security, which is heavily linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Jumblatt, 65, had informed Berri that he wanted to resign so his eldest son, Taymour Jumblatt, could run for his seat.

If Jumblatt did resign, the Interior Ministry would have to set a date for a by-election to fill not just his seat but also one of the three seats of the southern district of Jezzine that have been vacant since the death of MP Michel Helou last spring. Helou was from Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform parliamentary bloc.

The source said that among the reasons Berri urged Jumblatt to postpone his resignation was the fact that the speaker did not want to engage in an electoral battle with Aoun in Jezzine right now.

Although candidates of the March 8 coalition ran alongside those of Aoun in the 2009 parliamentary elections, this did not apply to Jezzine, which saw a standoff between Aoun and Berri’s allies.

In the end, Aoun won all of Jezzine’s three seats.

The source added that MP Sleiman Frangieh, the head of the Marada Movement, would likely follow Jumblatt’s example in order to allow his son Tony to replace him in one of the three Zghorta parliamentary seats.

The leader of the Druze minority sect, which is historically influential in Lebanese politics, Jumblatt was elected an MP for the first time in 1992 and in all of the following polls since then.

Jumblatt became the PSP’s leader in the early years of the country’s Civil War following the March 1977 assassination of his father Kamal Jumblatt, the founder of the party.

However, it is unlikely that if he resigns Jumblatt would abandon his political career altogether.

In an interview last year, Jumblatt said he would continue to follow up on politics once he was no longer an MP.

“I will not run in the parliamentary elections. But I will continue my political life as an observer ... observing events of the world and traveling,” he said.

Born in 1982, Taymour Jumblatt, who earned a degree in politics from the American University of Beirut, has been accompanying his father on visits to politicians in Lebanon and abroad in recent years.