Beirut: Lebanon’s 10-member Constitutional Council unanimously rejected the challenge against the extension of parliament’s mandate for two years and seven months, clarifying that its decision intended to prevent further vacuums in state institutions. General Michel Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement filed the challenge, described the council’s judgment as a ‘catastrophe’.
“This council will face a historic verdict and a national verdict,” he warned.
The commission, which acts as a Supreme Court to settle major legal disputes, agreed that regular parliamentary elections was a ‘sacrosanct principle’. However, it stressed that the situation Lebanon was facing needed to be taken into account as the country passes through an extraordinary situation.
As soon as the extraordinary circumstances are eliminated, Lebanon should hold parliamentary elections at the earliest, the council stressed.
The justices (five Christian and five Muslim) added insult to injury in rejecting Aoun’s FMP appeal by condemning the vacuum in the presidency, asserting that it was a ‘blatant violation of the constitution’.
Speaking to the English-language Daily Star, Aoun insisted that he was the ‘most popular’ Christian candidate, and the only one who could win over March 14 votes,” which stood in direct contradiction of what former Prime Minister Sa‘ad Hariri hoped would occur as he called for the election of a consensual presidential candidate acceptable to all factions.
Aoun repeated that the FPM enjoyed the widest Christian following with the largest Christian bloc in parliament that, presumably, made him the only viable candidate for the presidency. “It is not easy to tell a person I want to negotiate with you in order to oust you. This is disrespect and insolence,” Aoun maintained.
