The ongoing dispute regarding Article 49, during the fifth session for the election of the President of the Republic last Thursday, as in previous sessions, is merely a caricatured and demeaning engagement in approaching a provision that has become more politically contentious than constitutionally relevant in the context of the presidential elections. President Hussain al-Husseini, whose presence was missed at the Taif Conference on its 33rd anniversary and even more so in the Parliament, has a different interpretation of Article 49. For the first time, the Taif Agreement has been fundamentally amended since 1926, despite two transient amendments in 1927 and 1929 that did not affect its essence. A key clause was added, proposed by Al-Husseini, which he personally included at the beginning of the article during discussions with the late Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, and then debated by Lebanese MPs in Taif.
Al-Husseini states through "Al-Akhbar": "Certainly, the two-thirds quorum is the quorum required for convening a session to elect the President of the Republic in all rounds. The stability of this quorum results from the first newly added paragraph in Article 49, which refers to the President of the Republic as the President of the State and a symbol of national unity who ensures respect for the constitution. Therefore, it is not correct to elect him without at least two-thirds of the Parliament present."
He adds that the revised Article 49, when discussed, "received no objections, and its first application was during the election of President Rene Muawad, before we incorporated the reforms of the National Accord Document into the constitution a year after its approval. We elected President Muawad based on the new Article 49, particularly its first paragraph outlining the new role of the President as the President of the State, ensuring the continuity of the entity and preserving the system. He was elected in the presence of a two-thirds majority in the council even as the number of deputies decreased to 73, making the two-thirds quorum at that time 49 deputies. We did the same during the election of President Elias Hrawi. Electing the President in the presence of two-thirds of the assembly is the actual expression of the new role of the President of the Republic, placing him in a high position that enables him to prevent any party from violating the constitution and law. In Article 49, we did not intend for the President to engage in any role other than being the arbiter among all, not to intervene in the appointment of troublesome guardians."
Members of the "Kataeb" party and several "change" deputies decided to open a crack in the wall of the election crisis by discussing the required quorum in sessions following the first round. Speaker Nabih Berri insists that 86 deputies must be present, while some deputies believe that a presence of 65 deputies is sufficient in the second round and all subsequent sessions.
During the fifth session called for the election of the President last Thursday, several deputies asked the Speaker about the constitutional basis for his assertion of the 86-deputy quorum in all sessions, yet they received no satisfactory response. The head of the "Kataeb" party, Deputy Samy Gemayel, stated after the session: "We repeatedly tried during the session to clarify with the Speaker regarding the constitutional articles he relies on regarding quorum counting without success," demanding a clear response. "Otherwise, the debate will recur in every session." He emphasized that "Article 49 does not specify the quorum for the session, and therefore the sessions should remain open, and the deputies should stay in the council until a President is elected, based on Articles 74 and 75 of the constitution."
Deputy Melhem Khalaf also presented a legal argument during the session, reminding everyone of the content of Article 49, which states that "the President of the Republic is elected by secret ballot by a two-thirds majority of the Parliament in the first round, and an absolute majority is sufficient in the subsequent voting rounds." He pointed out that "this article does not explicitly stipulate the quorum required to convene the session for electing the President, but only specifies the majority needed for election in the first voting round, which it defined as two-thirds of the Parliament; that is, 86 votes out of 128 members of the Parliament. Subsequently, the council transitions to a second and third round until the candidate receives an absolute majority of votes, which is 65 votes." The evident proof of this, according to Khalaf, is the phrase "and an absolute majority is sufficient in the voting rounds that follow..."
He stated that this indicates that the Parliament remains convened according to the constitution, and "the session cannot be adjourned except for a brief period of time to initiate the next and third and fourth voting rounds indefinitely until the President is elected." Khalaf demanded to "keep the election session open for consecutive unlimited rounds—even if it takes several days—until a President is elected."
The head of the "Justice" legal foundation, lawyer Dr. Paul Merhej, asserts that "Article 49 of the constitution does not stipulate a quorum, but exclusively outlines the necessity of a two-thirds majority to elect the President in the first round and an absolute majority in the second and following rounds, and it does not mention the quorum." He noted that "if there is a conflation between the majority and the quorum in the first round, given that the presence of 86 deputies is required, we do not understand why the insistence on the quorum of 86 continues in the other rounds."
Merhej indicates, in a statement to "Asharq Al-Awsat": "The insistence on the quorum of 86 deputies in all rounds offers a pretext for 44 deputies to obstruct the convening of Parliament, thus putting us in the position of minority abuse instead of majority abuse and repeated improper use of quorum in a significant matter, rather than resorting to democratic competition among the majorities."
