The Presidential Elections’ 12th Session: March 14 Remnants Have No Problem Seeing Lebanon on the Brink

By Mohammad Youssef

Beirut – The 12^th session of presidential elections in Lebanon three days ago came as a big disappointment to those who nominated Jihad Azour to the position.

After casting the ballots by the parliament members, the session was concluded with 51 votes to Sleiman Frangieh and 59 votes to Azour.

The remnants of March 14 group, along with other groups from the Lebanese Forces Party, the Kataeb Party and the Free Patriotic Movement have all joined ranks to eliminate Frangieh from the presidential race.

They hoped they would be able to get around 65 votes so they would announce their victory and make a kind of sit in inside the parliament. They would further start a kind of constitutional discussion about a conclusion presumably backed by a legal study about the correctness of the voting with only 65 votes from the first session. This would bring the whole country into a major and complete shift which would pose a great menace to the whole constitutional formula.

They wanted the election to be a game changer, a window for a new development that would change the whole political scene. Thank God this did not happen, because the whole country would have been in a completely different track which would eventually lead to explosion.

There is a problem in the mentality they have towards the country, they see no problem at all to play the brink.

They openly announced they would withdraw from the session and cause the loss of quorum if Frangieh was to be elected president. They considered this as a constitutional right exercised under democracy, however they do not recognize this as a right to our team if we have the intention to do it. In this regard, this means when we want to practice their same practice we would be considered by them as blocking the democratic procedure.

Moreover, they started an open black propaganda against our team accusing and labeling it with false and fake allegations.

Our team has always called for dialogue to produce an agreement over a candidate to the presidency.

We received many candidates of diverse political backgrounds and held open and frank discussions with them. The opposing team of the March 14 remnants and their temporary allies wanted one thing from our side – to stop supporting Frangieh to the position, thus denying him his democratic right.

A lesson to be considered after all this. The result of the last round of elections came as a negative surprise to them. Any further session will bring more or less the same result, that is why, we hereby and again call for a free and open conversation among all to reach an agreement over this, otherwise, we would continue to be engulfed in the same vicious cycle that would lead to one single result, more suffering and deterioration for the people and the country.