Aoun rebounds in Azour-Frangié tie, weighs Hezbollah veto

The Beirut Parliament will meet tomorrow, June 14, to elect a new head of state, after an eight-month vacancy. A balance is emerging between the two main rivals, which freezes their chances of victory. The former French foreign minister is expected to arrive in Beirut next week to give fresh impetus to the general’s candidacy.

Beirut () – A parliamentary session is scheduled for tomorrow, June 14, to elect the new president of the Lebanese Republic, a position that has been vacant for eight months. Except for big surprises, the meeting will not end with a white smoke and the election of a new head of state. At most, a confrontation between the applicants with the highest degree of consensus will be confirmed. On the one hand, Jihad Azour, outgoing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the Middle East and North Africa and former Lebanese Minister of Finance (2005-8), an expression of the commitment supported by the Christian parties and Walid’s Druze bloc Joumblatt. On the other hand is Sleiman Frangié, supported by the Shiite tandem (Hezbollah-Amal), his own party (4 deputies) and pro-Syrian deputies. The former is expected to get 50-55 votes, while the latter is credited with 43-45 votes. These scores are far from the 85 votes needed to be elected in the first ballot (two-fours of the House’s 128 votes).

The general opinion is that there will be no second round: in all probability, the President will suspend the session under any pretext or the deputies who vote for Frangié will withdraw, causing the lack of the necessary quorum for the election, which, according to the Constitution, must be of two thirds (85 seats). According to sources inside the Assembly, the Shiite tandem does not want to run the risk that eventually the vote will go towards Azour’s candidacy, which would allow him to be elected with an absolute majority.

A not remote hypothesis in this case, since in the second round the candidate can be elected with 65 votes (absolute majority plus one). In this sense, secret agreements between the parties could also be closed behind the scenes. The additional votes would come from a parliamentary “soft belly” made up, in particular, of two groups: the first, mostly Sunni independents; the second, from opposition deputies. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that five votes of the Free Patriotic Movement (CLP) are missing, which would present a blank vote and make Azour’s election lack the necessary support.

However, tomorrow’s vote, even if it is not conclusive, will be totally different from the eleven similar votes that have preceded it in recent months, since the end of Michel Aoun’s presidential term, on October 31, 2022. In fact, It will mark an intensification of the battle between Hezbollah, the spearhead of the Shiite tandem, and the forces that want to defeat its hegemony and whose core is now made up of the big Christian parties: first of all the CPL, together with the Lebanese Forces and the Kataëb party, that is, almost 080% of the 64 deputies that make up this (Christian) community. To this is added the warning of the Maronite Patriarch, Card. Beshara Raï, who has repeatedly recalled that Bkerké is “at an equal distance from all the candidates” and has no intention of taking sides.

This new political phase risks inaugurating a (new and) long period of stagnation and renewed tensions. Stripped of the precious “Christian cover” that the CPL assured it, Hezbollah will emerge more clearly as an intransigent party and, according to the accusation of its adversaries, even more “totalitarian”. A position that emerges more clearly with the rejection without hesitation or explanations of Azour’s candidacy, which in his eyes came to be considered a figure of “confrontation, challenge and submission.”

However, the choice of the senior IMF official had all the air of compromise. For this reason, also on the advice of the Vatican and Paris, which recently visited, the Maronite Patriarch tried to convince the leaders of Hezbollah, sending them as an emissary the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Monsignor Boulos Abdel Sater. For its part, the international financial community itself had reacted favorably to this candidacy, knowing that Lebanon could not recover from an economic and general crisis, without the advice and guidance of the IMF.

Beyond the result and the seats obtained, tomorrow’s will also be a battle for “national legitimacy.” Regardless of the number of seats they win, both Sleiman Frangié and Jihad Azour will lose out on this. In fact, the preamble of the Constitution establishes that “no legitimacy will be granted to any power that contradicts the pact of life in common”. However, Frangié only enjoys a very marginal “legitimacy” on the part of the Christian world, while Azour totally lacks legitimacy on the part of the Shiite universe (27 elected members). The risk now is that Sleiman Frangié and Jihad Azour, after having fulfilled their votes, find themselves in a pitched battle with the same marker that repeats itself ad infinitum.

President Emmanuel Macron understood this and decided to step up his mediation by appointing a new emissary for Lebanon, former French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. The former head of diplomacy in Paris is expected to arrive in Beirut next week to replace Patrick Durell, adviser for Africa and the Middle East at the Quai d’Orsay. And here an old name, which has never faded although he has been in the background lately, comes back into play: will fortune smile on the army commander, General Joseph Aoun? Or two emerging names like Neemat Frem or Ziad Baroud?

The wheel keeps turning, but Hezbollah’s veto risks getting the gears stuck again.

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