Could the Tripoli Block‘s bombshell be Hariri’s back door to compromise?
Yada yada yada?
“We will boycott the election of a new President if less than the two thirds of Lebanese MPs are present”
You’d be excused to think the above statement was made by an opposition figure. But when you learn that it was Mohamed Al Safadi, the effective leader of the March14 Tripoli Block (Three Sunnis and One Greek Orthodox), it can be a cause for scratching heads.
March14‘s strategy is to conduct a Presidential election “on time” irrespective of the size of the majority. The purpose is to get a March 14 President elected against the will of the opposition. Alsafadi’s coalition of four is small, but it can break the back of the tiny majority that could have made the Presidential election constitutional in the eyes of March 14.
Alsafadi’s statement, which was immediately lauded by Speaker Berri as “A Nationalistic and courageous step”, can be looked at as a back door channel through which Hariri is compromising on the Presidency. Hariri has always been tempted to compromise on that issue, which has a higher priority to the Christian wing of March 14 than to the Sunni wing.
The choice of the Tripoli block also has a high “plausible deniability” factor. The city of Tripoli, although a staunch supporter of the Future movement, still has a strong grudge against Samir Geagea who is believed to have killed Rachid Karami, a popular old time Tripoli Prime Minister. Mr. Geagea is the strongest advocate of a “March 14 President”, as opposed to the “Compromise President” the Shias are publicly inviting the Sunnis to choose together.
Hariri can always maintain that Safadi’s move is for local political reasons and that it has nothing to do with his own commitments to his Christian partners, and Mr. Safadi insists that his block is still a major part of the March 14 coalition.
Update: Patriarch Sfeir Endorses the constitutional view that two-thirds of the MPs should attend during the Presidential election. He says the constitution is clear regarding that matter.
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
Ah the old “we need to screw our enemy (Geagea) and if the country is lost in the process, it’s just too bad.
BTW the constitution is NOT clear on the 2/3, and if anything evidence tilts the other way.
Josey,
It is good you specified geagea in your statement because otherwise it applis to every single group.
March14th needs to screw the enemy (Syria) even if lebanon is lost.
Hezballah &co need to screw the enemy (israel) even if Lebanon is lost.
Aoun wants to screw the enemy (elli nahabou el balad) even if lebanon is lost.
Mustapha,
of all the ppl whom i thought would be fooled the media manipulation, i couldn’t even believe that you would be one of them!
You among all should be more aware to the political scene in Tripoli. Last elections showed a great advantage for MP Safadi and Tripoli Bloc’s candidates over Future movement’s ones, even though they were in the same list.
In Tripoli, there’s a silent yet obvious competition over leadership between Hariri and Safadi, but the latest events lead to both men deciding to become in one alliance. Yet, Tripoli Bloc always makes things clear that they are are just followers of future movement, but yet an independent political force with huge influence in Tripoli and the North in general.
From that point of view, you can see the last statement as a way to show the local scene in Tripoli this difference, and at the same time it could be a stratigic move, organized by M14 to check the reaction of the opposition to such appraoch.
What support such thing is the fact that the rest of M14 leaders didn’t comment on Tripoli Bloc’s statement, and if you are to read the statement carefully, you will see that they didn’t deviate from M14 main lines (make sure to read my post).
In all cases, only time will reveal the truth behind all that….
Not to mention teh strong alliance between Safadi and Geagea. In alomost all of his interviews, Geagea seems keen to mention Safadi as a strong ally, and Safadi never fails to return the favor. So the analogy that Hariri and Safadi are trying to screw Geagea to gain more political support from people in Tripoli is NOT a valid one.
What about this as a move to forestall future assassinations of March 14 MPs? If indeed the Tripoli Block has, with this statement, broken the back of the tiny March 14 majority (to paraphrase your statement) this makes more assassinations unnecessary. Yes, this is pure speculation on my part, and I would hasten to add that prior comments here sound more reasonable (plausible?), but we are talking about Lebanese politics here.
Unbelievably confusing constitution and purely undemocratic. This 2/3 issue started lately true, but it will come back at every presidential election from now on. Pffff from now on, every president must have the support of 2/3 of the parliament to be automatically elected or else to hell with the presidency. It is ridiculous to call ourselves a democratic country when everything is made to be so undemocratic.
By the way, and to talk about the subject itself, even if today this 2/3 issue doesnt help the March 14, in the future it will benefit each community by itself, since no president can any longer be elected but appointed by the crushing majority of the parliament. Another lebanese fattouch in other terms. The big loosers for this 2/3 condition are the christians themselves, as they needed before 50% of the parliament votes which they have +1 other comunity vote to elect a president, now they will need 50% plus 27% of the muslim part of the parliament to elect a president. Aoun commited suicide with this decision, not one sunni or druze will ever vote for him ever, that is supposing that he has all the christian seats (haha)and all the shi3a seats (easy), the sunni and the druze will keep boycotting the presidentials till his billionth clone!!!
Ma fi 2/3, sorry, ma fi presidentials!!!
At Last , some sanity …..
Poor Future News paper , as always they try to mislead its people . They didn’t even cover it………….
Sad
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22073903-2,00.html
Tank driver ‘had beef’ with phone towers
For those about to shut off their cell phones on the 19th you might want to read the story from the link above to alternative methods of trying to convince a-holes in the gov’t to reduce cost of the ridiculously limited cell services provided in LB.
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Let’s making from August 14th, a day to blog for Lebanon, for its national unity, safety and stability.
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As someone who has worked on the election campaign of the March 14 movement in Tripoli,I can safely say that Safadi’s latest move is simply a maneuver in a bid to one day become Prime Minister. Safadi, who is effectively the most powerful man in Tripoli these days, has been playing these dirty power games since the elections. From what we heard, as campaigners of other March 14 candidates in tripoli, the Safadi camp was asking some supporters to scratch out all the other March 14 candidates on the list so that Safadi would end up with the majority among march 14 candidates. Why? He later got a cabinet seat, which was ultimately going to be given to the Sunni-Muslim in tripoli with the largest popular base. He also slowly expanded the tripoli bloc, which I predict will one day be some new bloc with a larger regional reach depending on the future electoral law. All this is, in my honest opinion, a bid by Safadi, who has large sums of money, to become Prime Minister. This latest move is an obvious shift to the center. He presumes that if there is an eventual Presidential election based on consensual candidate then when it comes to choosing a Prime Minister he may be a consensus choice that the opposition is willing to accept or even nominate. The opposition will view his Presidential election move favorably and will opt for anything that is at the very least semi-independent from the Future Movement, with a popular sunni base(financial motivated, trust me).
This is all, however, assuming that the opposition does favor consensus over the status quo. Personally I don’t think they do. I know I don’t because a consensus based on these manipulative political maneuvers between two completely opposite views of the country will destroy the country!
Anonymous says..
“March14th needs to screw the enemy (Syria) even if lebanon is lost.”
Don’t you think Syria is the one doing the screwing here and March 14 is merely trying to put an end to there aggression.
On another note…I am tired of the labels anti-Syrians and pro-Syrians. Let’s call them for what they really are: pro-Lebanese or anti-Lebanese..
then you tell me who’s working for the well-being and benefit of one united Lebanon and who’s working for their own self-interest or the intereset of their regional masters.
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