Election crisis set to paralyze Parliament

BEIRUT: Christian parties plan to boycott Parliament sessions in response to a looming presidential vacuum as lawmakers failed Thursday for the fifth time in a row to pick a successor to President Michel Sleiman, three days before his six-year term expires.

Parliament’s repeated failure to elect a new president has underscored the lawmakers’ inability to break the stalemate, and subsequently shifted attention to regional and international powers to help in filling the presidential void.

Political sources said they expected the presidential vacuum to last a few months with any hope of a breakthrough hinging on regional and international intervention.

After Thursday’s session failed to elect a president over lack of quorum, Speaker Nabih Berri said that he would call Parliament into session at any time that a consensus candidate was agreed upon or a quorum of MPs was reached.

“If any positive developments emerged, I will immediately call for an election session,” Berri told The Daily Star.

He said if new president was not elected a few days after the presidential vacuum, he would call for a regular Parliament session every 15 days.

“The problem is not with Parliament, but with politicians who have failed to agree on a [presidential] candidate,” Berri said.

He added that he was adamant on Parliament’s legislative role, including a May 27 session to discuss and approve the salary scale bill for civil servants and public teachers.

Apparently responding to Christian lawmakers who have threatened to boycott Parliament sessions in protest at a presidential vacuum, Berri said he rejected using the power vacuum as a pretext to disrupt Parliament’s legislative role.

“I don’t want to set precedents to obstruct Parliament’s role on the pretext of a presidential vacuum,” Berri said, adding: “Anyone who wants to boycott [Parliament] is free to do so. But a boycott will be contrary to democracy.”

Parliament’s failure to elect a successor to Sleiman has pushed Lebanon closer to a presidential vacuum, increasing Christian concerns over the country’s delicate power-sharing formula.

Addressing a Cabinet session he chaired at the Grand Serail, Prime Minister Tammam Salam said until a president is elected, the government would assume full executive powers and care for the people’s affairs. He called for combined efforts by all political parties to elect a new president so that the period of a presidential vacuum would not be long.

Interior Minister Nuhad Machnouk ruled out the resignation of Christian ministers over the presidential vacuum. “Christian leaders would not threaten political stability,” he said before entering the Cabinet meeting.

Machnouk added that Christian leaders are “too wise to stall the Cabinet’s work.”

Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra said his party was coordinating with other allied March 14 Christian groups to boycott Parliament sessions in response to a vacuum in the country’s top Christian post.

“We will only attend sessions to elect a new president or sessions to discuss extraordinary issues,” Zahra told The Daily Star.

“We will boycott ordinary Parliament sessions, including the [May 27] session to discuss the salary scale draft law,” he said. “Our position is intended to push the lawmakers into electing a new president.”

Zahra said the Kataeb Party tended to take a similar position on boycotting Parliament sessions.

LF MP George Adwan said Parliament should not be allowed to legislate while the presidency seat is vacant.

“It is true that the government combined can replace the president according to the Constitution ... But we cannot behave as if nothing has happened. We should not be called to attend sessions and legislate as if there is a president in office,” Adwan told reporters in Parliament after Thursday’s session.

“The lack of quorum would lead to a vacuum in the presidential post and ultimately a vacuum in the Christian component in the country, and this would cause Parliament to lose the authority to legislate,” he said.

“Legislation in the case of a void in the president’s seat is allowed only if institutions’ paths are at risk,” Adwan added.

The Daily Star’s attempts to reach Kataeb Party MP Sami Gemayel for comment on the impact of the presidential void on the Cabinet and Parliament meetings were not successful. But Gemayel said last week his party would not attend Parliament sessions in the event of a presidential vacuum.

Two Kataeb MPs said a final decision on whether to boycott Parliament and Cabinet sessions would be taken during a meeting Friday to be chaired by party head Amine Gemayel.

“A meeting of the Kataeb Party’s mini-political bureau will decide on whether to attend Parliament and Cabinet sessions amid the presidential vacuum,” Kataeb MP Fadi Haber told The Daily Star.

Kataeb MP Samer Saadeh said the party has still three days before Sleiman’s mandate expires to decide on whether to attend Parliament session if a new president was not elected.

MP Ibrahim Kanaan from MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc said the bloc would meet Monday to decide on Parliament and Cabinet meetings in the event of a presidential vacuum.

As in last week’s session, only 73 lawmakers showed up Thursday, well below the two-thirds quorum (86) of the legislature’s 128 members required to begin the session.

As they did in previous sessions, lawmakers from Aoun’s bloc, Hezbollah and its March 8 allies thwarted a quorum by boycotting Thursday’s meeting apparently to pressure their March 14 rivals to reach agreement beforehand on a consensus candidate for the presidency.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, the March 14-backed candidate for the presidency, called Thursday “a sad day” and accused the March 8 coalition of obstructing the Parliament sessions because it was not confident of winning.

“The state now is crippled and it becomes a caretaker one,” said Geagea, who followed the Parliament session from his Maarab residence, north of Beirut. “The state gets crippled when the presidential post is vacant, and this is what we are facing at this stage.”

“The March 8 side did not attend the sessions because it was not sure of the victory of its candidate, thus plunging the country into a vacuum,” he said.

Syria court gives Jumblatt, Khashan legal notice: reports

BEIRUT: A Syrian court issued legal notices against Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt and Lebanese journalist Fares Khashan, accusing them of undermining the state’s reputation, according to reports Thursday.

Though the local LBCI TV channel reported the Lebanese Foreign Ministry had received the notices from the Criminal Court in Latakia, the ministry issued a statement denying it had received summons from Syria for Jumblatt and Khashan.

The lawsuit dates back to 2006, when Syria’s military court filed a case against Jumblatt and “others revealed by investigation,” accusing the defendants of “defaming” the state by blaming Syria for the series of bombings and assassinations in Lebanon in 2005.

At the time, there were arrest warrants out for Jumblatt, Khashan and MP Marwan Hamade.

A judicial source told The Daily Star that the notices would be ineffective in practice, given Jumblatt’s parliamentary immunity and Khashan’s absence from the country. Khashan is a Paris-based reporter for the local newspaper Al-Mustaqbal.

Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi expressed surprise over the issuance of the legal notices, “especially since the amnesty issued by the Syrian regime in 2013 included these charges,” he told a local television station, announcing that he would turn the notices back.

He said the Syrian Embassy in Lebanon had handed in the legal notices to the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, which in turn had transferred them to the Justice Ministry.

For his part, Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, a PSP official, also expressed indignation toward the notices. “It is not worth the ink it was written with, and in Syria there is no judiciary, but a criminal system, which represents the least of the regime’s evil doings,” he said in a statement.

Salam hopes vacuum in presidency will be brief

BEIRUT: Prime Minister Tammam Salam said Thursday he hoped the presidential void would not last long and urged various political groups to shoulder responsibility to elect a new head of state as soon as possible.

Salam spoke at the beginning of a Cabinet session he chaired at the Grand Serail that finalized several appointments, hours after Parliament failed to hold a session to elect a president for lack of the required two-thirds quorum. The premier warned that an extended void in the presidency would have detrimental effects on the country.

The Cabinet convened with 100 items on its agenda. Ministers will meet again Friday at the Baabda presidential palace. Friday’s session will be the last one to be chaired by President Michel Sleiman, whose mandate expires Sunday.

The departing president is expected to hold a farewell dinner banquet with the ministers and their spouses afterward at the Baabda palace.

Speaking to reporters during a break, Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi said there was a high probability that Friday’s Cabinet session would examine the issue of Syrian refugees and the option of establishing refugee camps along the border with Syria. Cabinet will also discuss a full report drafted by the ministerial committee tasked with looking into the Syrian refugees file, according to Azzi.

The Cabinet approved a fresh batch of administrative appointments. It appointed Susan al-Khoury Youhanna as the director-general of the Directorate of Personal Status. Omar Hamzeh was appointed director-general of Municipalities, and Hoda Salloum will head the Traffic and Vehicles Management authority.

The Cabinet also appointed a new executive council for the Rafik Hariri University Beirut Hospital, which in recent years has been mired in corruption and mismanagement.

Ministers also allotted a sum of $18 million for the construction of the Tannourine road in the Batroun area as well as $6 million for the Ihmij-Lalou road in the mountainous region of Jbeil.

Influx of jihadists to Palestinian camps

BEIRUT: A large number of jihadists from Syrian extremist groups have recently made their way into Lebanon, particularly into Palestinian refugee camps in the south, according to security reports.

The Lebanese security services have received reports from Palestinian security officials about an influx of a large number of fighters from the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) to the Palestinian refugee camps of Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in southern Lebanon, where the new arrivals were joining active extremist groups and cells.

ISIS and the Nusra Front have been heavily involved in the war in neighboring Syria against President Bashar Assad’s regime. The extent to which the opposition has fractured, however, has meant they have also been pitted against each other.

All of this bodes ill for the camps. Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest camp, has witnessed a series of violent incidents and confrontations recently. Officials have responded by establishing a new, elite security force to police the area, restore calm and prevent any further escalation.

The security services expect that the camp will descend into further violence, especially following the appearance in Lebanon of Nusra Front notable leaders, who move around both within the camp and outside of it, particularly in the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanese security forces are monitoring Syrian national Mohammad Ammar T., 46, who is from the Hama province and is known as “Abu Msayyem,” and Fouad A.A., 44, a Syrian national from Damascus. Both regularly make trips to the Lebanese border town of Arsal in east Lebanon, which is known for its strong support for Syrian rebels and houses many of their families.

Sources following up on the issue said they feared an eruption of clashes between the Lebanese Army and remnants of rebels who fled the Syrian town of Yabroud and its surrounding areas – following the victory of the regime and Hezbollah there – to take refuge in Arsal, specifically in Wadi Ajram.

According to the security information, the newly formed Saifullah group, members of whom have recently made their way to Lebanon, is composed of different nationalities, including Syrians, Egyptians and Palestinians.

They are believed to live in different areas for the purpose of dispersion and camouflage, and so as not to draw attention to themselves.

Sources also confirmed that the Ziad Jarrah Brigades – which is part of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, the group that claimed responsibility for several attacks against Iranian interests in Lebanon – had finished reorganizing its new leadership in Lebanon after a recommendation by Al-Qaeda command in Waziristan and Pakistan.

Areas where Hezbollah enjoys broad support were subject to a number of car bombs and suicide attacks at the end of last year and the beginning of this year after the party joined the Syrian war alongside President Bashar Assad.

Additionally, a Qatari security delegation recently arrived to Lebanon and held a series of meetings with security officials, which entailed discussing files related to the jihadists who have allegedly come to Lebanon from Syria.

Qatari intelligence reportedly has information on terrorist activities that are expected to take place in Qatar but are being prepared in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has no plans to stop fighting in Syria

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah will deliver a speech in the southern town of Bint Jbeil this weekend to mark Resistance and Liberation Day.

Many wonder whether he will make any announcements regarding the party’s military involvement in Syria, in light of recent speculation that Hezbollah is considering retreating from Syria, or at least suspending its military operations in Lebanon’s neighbor.

A high-ranking Hezbollah official confidently told The Daily Star that pulling the party’s troops from Syria “is unlikely and not on the table at all ... We will not withdraw from the Syria fighting at all because it is an existential battle in every sense of the word, and it comes with obligations and sacrifices as large as the danger.”

Hezbollah announced that it was involved in the neighboring conflict in May last year, the same month of the Resistance and Liberation Day, which celebrates the party’s triumph over Israel in 2000 when the country finally ended its occupation of south Lebanon.

According to the party’s opponents, Hezbollah has drowned due to its involvement in Syria, which has dented its popularity, and has also contributed to the incitement of strife between Sunnis and Shiites in the Arab world.

But Hezbollah does not seem too preoccupied with these readings, according to the official, and instead believes that the Syrian battlefield is the real decision maker.

In his speech this weekend, Nasrallah is expected to reaffirm that Hezbollah stands behind its decisions, especially regarding its military role in Syria, which is likely to be heavily discussed in the leader’s speech, including in terms of the party’s fighters’ achievements. Hezbollah does not necessarily feel that the Syrian crisis is a threat to its political agenda, but rather sees it as a real existential danger to essential components of the Arab world.

The official went on to justify the party’s involvement in Syria, saying that when the conflict began, Hezbollah had called for dialogue between the regime and the rebels and did not enter the battlefield.

“But when serious threat began, not to our political resistance program but to the coexistence of the people of the Arab region and with the unprecedented spread of the takfiri danger, there had to be a crucial decision to confront [this], whatever the sacrifices,” he said.

He went on to list the accomplishments on the field, saying that it was perhaps the battle of Qusair in the summer of 2013 that was the most effective. In November, the party, along with Syrian regime forces, attacked the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta and took control of the towns of Nishabieh, Blalieh and Otaibeh. The official said the operation foiled Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan’s plan to topple the regime and led to the fall of the Qalamoun region despite its difficult geographical nature.

“But the party wanted to effectively eliminate the centers that were responsible for producing car bombs and suicide bombers as well as completely severing connection between Syrian rebels and their supporters in Lebanon,” the official explained.

After taking control of Qalamoun, the party’s greatest victory, fighting moved toward Jawbar and Mliha, eventually leading to the regime seizing the main portal to rural Damascus, eastern Ghouta.

According to the official, this further fixed the party’s understanding of the Syrian reality and the aims of the rebels. “ Hezbollah could not stand idly by,” he said.

The party’s battle was not only limited to the military and field operations, but also had political implications and reflections on Lebanon’s domestic political scene and, specifically, the presidential election.

Hezbollah’s victories in Syria are likely to bear numerous results that will emerge soon, according to the official.

First, President Bashar Assad is bound to win in the upcoming presidential election, giving him a mandate to reorganize the political agenda after the failure of Geneva I and II conferences and the retreat of the opposition on field.

Second, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is predicted to head the new Iraqi government.

Third, the U.S.-Iranian negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program is expected to bear fruit in June, which would lead to redrawing the political map of the region.

“We will not respond to simplistic and superficial invitations regarding the Syrian crisis,” the official concluded.

“We are engaged in the conflict there until the end, and our withdrawal from there is only a pipe dream as long as the other party has lost bets on the Syrian crisis once and for all.”

Machnouk urges Syrian refugees not to hold public gatherings

BEIRUT: Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk called on Syrian refugees Thursday not to hold any political meetings or gatherings, saying they could affect the fragile security situation in Lebanon.

The call comes ahead of the presidential election in Syria, scheduled for June 3.

Machnouk asked refugees “not to hold any political gatherings, and not to hold public meetings with political dimensions that could in any way affect the security and stability of Lebanon, or the relationship between Syrian refugees and Lebanese people,” according to a statement released by the Interior Ministry.

The statement said the decision was taken in accordance with the government’s policy of disassociation from the Syrian crisis and to safeguard relations between the Lebanese people and Syrian refugees.

The statement added that refugees had the right to exercise their “freedom and political choice,” insofar as they observe “the rules of Lebanese national security.”

He also asked the U.N. and international organizations to maintain their responsibilities toward the refugees and work on notifying them about the ministry’s decision and to follow up on its implementation.

The minister called on the Lebanese security services “to not be lenient in dealing firmly with any act or activity that could destabilize internal security.” Lebanon is hosting over 1 million Syrian refugees.

Obama's Relationship With Hispanic Voters Hinges On GOP

Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approximately 7:00 p.m. ET.

When you think about the party that has problems with Latino voters, it's usually the GOP. In 2012, they lost the Hispanic vote by more than 2 to 1, and long-term demographic changes could make that gap bigger. But President Obama and the Democrats also have their own problems with the Hispanic vote.