The lengthening of Parliament’s mandate goes into effect next week because the Constitutional Council will be unable to meet for lack of a quorum to act on petitions challenging the extension, a key council member said Wednesday.
He accused Speaker Nabih Berri, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt of obstructing the council’s work by preventing the quorum needed to decide on petitions challenging the extension of Parliament’s four-year mandate, which expires on June 20.
“Probably, orders from beyond the border have been issued to these three leaders to proceed with the extension [of Parliament’s term]. Depriving the Constitutional Council of a quorum will make the extension legitimate,” the council member told The Daily Star.
The half-Muslim, half-Christian 10-member council failed to meet Wednesday for the second day running in the absence of a quorum after its two Shiite members and a Druze member failed to show up in what appeared to be a calculated plan by senior politicians to foil any possibility of the council endorsing the challenges to the extension of Parliament’s term.
The council decided to meet on June 18 and on June 20, the day when Parliament’s mandate expires.
But the council member dismissed any hope of securing a quorum for next week’s sessions after “scathing verbal attacks” against Judge Issam Suleiman, the head of the council, launched by media outlets run by Hezbollah and Berri’s Amal Movement.
“If we reach June 20 without a quorum being secured for the council’s sessions, the extension of Parliament’s mandate will definitely become a fait accompli,” the member said. He added that the council’s prerogatives were confined to only to rejecting or accepting the challenges, rather than setting the period of the extension.
The council cannot vote without a quorum of eight members, while a decision needs the support of at least seven.
The U.S. Embassy criticized the boycott, saying it should rule on the challenges without political pressure.
“The Constitutional Council should consider and rule on the challenges before it without political interference,” the embassy tweeted. “Boycott of the Constitutional Council further erodes Lebanon’s democracy and reflects lack of respect for Lebanon’s institutions [and] rule of law,” it said. “Efforts to undermine the democratic process shakes stability and international confidence in Lebanon.”
The council were slated to discuss a report by Suleiman on the challenges against the 17-month extension of Parliament’s mandate filed earlier this month by President Michel Sleiman and MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc.
Berri and Jumblatt, whose representatives in the council have boycotted its meetings, favor extending Parliament’s mandate and have warned against holding the polls in a volatile security situation.Berri defended the three members’ boycott, as MPs who visited him quoted him as saying “the three members’ stance emanated from their keenness and commitment to the law and the Constitution to ward off strife.”
Council member Judge Salah Mukheiber, who showed up for Wednesday’s session, accused the Shiite and Druze members of boycotting the council’s meetings for political reasons. “The three members are staying away from the sessions for political reasons. The truth is that there is a political party that doesn’t want the elections and its interest lies in the extension,” he told The Daily Star.
He said had a quorum been secured, the council would have issued a decision on the challenges in a single session.
Referring to next week’s sessions, he said: “If a quorum is secured, it’s ok. If not, the head of the council will prepare official minutes on what happened and send them to the president and the prime minister.”
Mukheiber scoffed at demands by the three absent members for the heads of security bodies to be invited to the council’s meeting to ask them if the security situation was favorable for holding the elections.
“Can the Constitutional Council summon employees and question them? Is it logical that after the Higher Defense Council had met under the country’s president and took a decision to ensure a favorable climate for the elections to ask the army commander or the [army] intelligence chief if the security situation permitted holding the elections?” Mukheiber asked. “Is it logical to ask the director general of the Internal Security Forces about the possibility of holding the elections while the [caretaker] interior minister has announced that the ministry and its agencies were ready to hold the elections? This is shameful.”
The three members argued that they would not attend because Judge Suleiman was acting illegally as the judge with the final say, a political source told The Daily Star. They also cited Suleiman’s rejection of their request to summon security officials to answer questions about why Parliament was extended due to security concerns, the source added.
by: Antoine Ghattas Saab
