From the president’s message to the council’s decision: the ruler is the strongest!

Under the title: “From the message of the president to the decision of Parliament: the ruler is the strongest”, wrote Nicolas Nassif in the newspaper “Al-Akhbar”: Parliament had never responded to a message to the President of the Republic that addressed under article 53, paragraph 10, as it did yesterday, whether the answer is a viable act of law, which it certainly isn’t, or a void act that ultimately cuts the neck of criminal scrutiny.

Throughout the successive parliaments of the Taif Agreement, they have received, so far, five letters from the presidents of the republic, but only the latter responded. The parliaments respected these principles of treatment of each of the letters according to the two mechanisms provided for in article 53 of the Constitution and article 145 of the internal regime of Parliament: receiving them, setting a date for a session to recite them three days after receiving them , then discuss them and take a position or decision on them. A constitutional authority vested in the President of the Republic is binding and can be obtained. So it always ended before taking the charge or the decision. Because the response to the message falls within the prerogatives of the Chamber of Deputies, it is subject in practice to the reality of the blocks, their balances and loyalties. Thus, experiences since the first precedent have drawn the distinction between sending a message and taking a position or making a decision about it.

In the first three messages, the procedures were correct, and they stopped discussing them without taking a decisive position or decision. He did not get a response from the House of Representatives in a decision as clear and clear as the one made by Parliament yesterday. He did not respond to President Elias Hrawi’s message on March 19, 1998, when he demanded the formation of the National Commission for the Abolition of Political Sectarianism, in conjunction with the adoption of an optional civil status law that was the culmination of a conflict between him and Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. President Emile Lahoud’s message on May 4, 2005 was not answered, calling for a new electoral law to replace the law in force since 2000 at the height of the clash over the parliamentary elections scheduled for that year after Hariri’s assassination. President Michel Suleiman’s letter of May 21, 2014 was not responded to just four days before the end of his term, urging Parliament to choose a successor before the constitutional deadline passed. Those three letters went to the wind as if they weren’t, were not recited at the Council, as if constitutional validity made no sense. The fourth presidential message was to President Michel Aoun on July 31, 2017, asking for an interpretation of article 95 of the constitution. The message reached the council and the date for its recitation was set for October 17, then it was withdrawn and dismissed due to the sensitivity of its content, which passed to something like a constitutional interpretation that was not timely. To that, Aoun was in the process of sending a message in December 2018 amid a dilemma caused by Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri’s failure to form a government for seven months, which he quickly turned a blind eye to. However, the writing was delayed until the following month. The last, fifth message, addressed to Parliament on November 24, is completely different from the one that preceded it. It may be true that so far it has no parallel. In the context of what this authority seeks, which is reflected in the reforms of the Taif Agreement, which has no precedent in the Constitution of 1926, I added his quote from the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic of 1958, that the President of the Republic directs it to Parliament to resolve a dispute between it and the procedural authority that does not vote in it and that presides over it when it attends AND that is bound by a binding term to sign its decisions. When it is not possible to agree, he turns to Parliament to intervene and resolve the dispute as long as the government is accountable to him for the regular work of constitutional institutions. The message has another task that acquires a special or exceptional character that justifies addressing the head of state, the legislative power, the mother of constitutional institutions, who is resorting to it in a dangerous right that threatens the unity of the country or of their society, or causes its division, or upsets its institutions, so that the parliament fulfills its role even though the president has the responsibility. Similar mentioned in article 49 of the Constitution. Here responsibility is shared in the face of urgent maturity, whatever its risks. This is what the four presidential messages expressed between 1998 and 2018.

As for what is happening today, it is unprecedented for the President of the Republic, as well as for the entire legislative branch:

1 – What Aoun originally requested, and then by extension, Parliament stepped in to cooperate with the government to allow the state to conduct forensic accounting audits of the Bank of Lebanon accounts, and from there to all public facilities in the state. What is exclusively understood – which is the precedent – the “complaint” to the Parliament of the Governor of the Banque du Liban Riad Salameh Al-Asi to implement the decisions of the procedural authority by providing the criminal audit firm “Alvarez End Marsal” the confidential accounts of the Bank of Lebanon.

What happened is that an employee, whoever they may be, refuses to implement government decisions, undermines an agreement it concluded with an international criminal audit firm, and withholds evidence of waste and financial engineering and its heavy losses that drained its treasury. and they led the country to collapse, the result of their collusion with the political class for four decades and the floating of banks. . Not to mention how many of those who received loans and contributions that were included among the non-adults in the political class and power, are not Lebanese. The man is not solely responsible, but he is the one who made the decision that led to what has become the national currency. In this way, it abandons the first two conditions of the International Monetary Fund and the French initiative, and prevents the initiation of structural reforms based on knowledge of the bankruptcy of the Lebanese State.

The worst of what was involved in this “complaint” was the revelation of the total inability to question the ruler, and forced him to implement the decisions of the executive branch. But it is the recognition that he is the strongest in the system.