Lebanese lawmakers elected army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a more than two-year vacancy and marking a step towards lifting the war-battered country out of financial meltdown. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney speaks to Ayman Mhanna, executive director of the Samir Kassir Foundation. He says that the military defeat of Hezbollah has significantly weakened its ability to impose its will on other Lebanese political forces.
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NewsTranscript
00:00This is Apropos.
00:03Well, his appointment ends a power vacuum that lasted for more than two years.
00:07Lawmakers in Lebanon have voted to elect the country's army chief as president,
00:12widely seen as the preferred choice of military backer, the United States,
00:16and regional heavyweight, Saudi Arabia.
00:18Joseph Owen now faces the daunting tasks of overseeing a fragile ceasefire
00:23and naming a prime minister capable of implementing the reforms
00:27demanded by international creditors.
00:29Solange Mouchan has more.
00:32Swathed in army fatigues, Joseph Owen was, for seven years,
00:37the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
00:40He's now the nation's president.
00:42After failing to win the necessary 86 votes in a first round,
00:46he passed that threshold in a second vote,
00:49finally filling a power vacuum that had been in place for over two years.
00:54Joseph Owen.
00:57Joseph Owen.
00:59He received 99 votes.
01:02Of late, the 60-year-old had become the face of consensus in Lebanon.
01:06He managed to not only gain the support of nearly all of the Sunni MPs,
01:10but enough of Hezbollah and Shiite lawmakers as well,
01:13after the Hezbollah-backed candidate withdrew and backed him.
01:17Born in 1964 in the Sin El Fil district in eastern Beirut,
01:21he studied political science and international affairs
01:23before joining the army as a cadet in 1983.
01:27Equally at ease in French and in English,
01:29the father of two comes from the Maronite Christian community.
01:32In Lebanon, the role of president is reserved for a Christian
01:35as part of its power-sharing structure.
01:38At the helm of the Lebanese army since 2017,
01:41Aoun, who shares the same last name as Lebanon's last president,
01:44Michel Aoun, but is of no relation,
01:47is said to have the support of international players,
01:50like the United States and Saudi Arabia.
01:52He played a significant role in the peace deal
01:54brokered by Paris and Washington between Israel and Hezbollah.
01:58And since then, international pressure had been mounting
02:00to end the political stalemate in Lebanon.
02:05To discuss, we're joined now by Ayman Manad,
02:08Executive Director of the Beirut-based NGO Samir Kassir Foundation.
02:12Thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
02:16Lebanon hasn't had a president since 2022.
02:19Why exactly has it taken so long to get to this point
02:21and why is this breakthrough coming now?
02:25Thank you. Good evening.
02:26As you saw in the report,
02:28it's the Parliament of Lebanon that elects a president.
02:31And there are very complex rules related to quorum,
02:35related to the number of MPs who first need to be present in the room
02:39and the number of MPs who need to vote for a certain candidate,
02:43for that candidate to win.
02:45Over the last two and a half years,
02:47the lawmakers failed to reach a consensus around a name.
02:51And therefore, after every one of the 13 previous sessions,
02:55lawmakers affiliated with Hezbollah and their allies
02:58physically leave the Parliament room
03:01and therefore the quorum is lost
03:04and the voting rounds cannot continue.
03:07And this was Hezbollah's way of blackmailing everyone in Lebanon
03:11by saying that either you vote for the candidate backed by Hezbollah
03:15or you will have no president.
03:17What has changed is the war that Lebanon has gone through
03:20and the military defeat of Hezbollah,
03:22which has significantly weakened its ability to impose anything,
03:26neither on the international community
03:28nor on the other Lebanese political parties.
03:30And speaking of that,
03:31Owen earned widespread respect for keeping the Lebanese military
03:35out of that war with Israel.
03:38Who exactly is he?
03:40What was his track record as head of the army
03:43and how much support does he have in Lebanon?
03:47In a way, he led the army in a fashion
03:50that resembles the French expression,
03:52la grande muette, the great silent institution.
03:56He was very far from giving media statements.
04:00He was not necessarily someone
04:02that the Lebanese people heard from very often,
04:05but they heard about him very often.
04:07And he was widely seen as an honest leader
04:12in a country where corruption is widespread.
04:16So this was a stark difference between him
04:18and many other potential candidates for the presidency.
04:22At the same time, the Lebanese army, as an institution,
04:25enjoys levels of respect and levels of support
04:28among the population that are higher than any other institution
04:32because specifically it is perceived as a non-corrupt
04:35or at least much less corrupt organization than the others.
04:40It is also an institution whose members
04:43come from various Lebanese sects
04:45and at the same time has managed to remain relatively immune
04:50to the political infighting that is very common in Lebanon,
04:54in other Lebanese political institutions,
04:56in the parliament, in government institutions,
04:58and even in local government, in municipalities.
05:01So this gave him enough respect in the general population.
05:05In addition to the very strong relationship
05:08he has built with other international partners of Lebanon,
05:11the United States definitely, but also France,
05:14Great Britain, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
05:18and so many other players in the region
05:20who found him as a consensus candidate
05:24who can garner the largest amount of support.
05:26And is he well-placed then to maintain
05:29the fragile ceasefire in place?
05:31What role did he play in putting that together?
05:36I mean, the details of the negotiations
05:38that led to the ceasefire remain very opaque
05:41for the Lebanese people in general.
05:43It happened mainly behind closed doors through envoys.
05:46But the Lebanese army was seen as the credible actor
05:50who can be present in South Lebanon,
05:54deploy in South Lebanon,
05:55in cooperation with the UN peacekeeping forces,
05:58the UNIFIL, in cooperation with the French and American army
06:02that are seen as the guarantors for the peace,
06:05or not the peace, sorry, for the ceasefire agreement.
06:08And the fact that there is international trust
06:11in the ability of the army to fill the void
06:14and to be present and to make sure
06:16that the fighting doesn't continue
06:18and that no military activities takes place
06:22in Southern Lebanon was one of the most essential role
06:26Joseph Haun has played recently.
06:27And this is probably what expedited
06:30his accession to the presidency.
06:34Because if there is one major task for the president,
06:38at least in the next few months,
06:40it's his ability to guarantee the full implementation
06:44of the ceasefire agreement.
06:45And consequently, the full implementation
06:48of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,
06:51which is seen as the gateway for Lebanon
06:55to regain some form of security stability,
06:58some form of sovereignty that are preconditions
07:02for any international aid to Lebanon,
07:04a country that is going through
07:06one of the worst economic crises
07:07that needs heavy investment in reconstruction.
07:10This money will not come if the leadership of the country
07:13is seen as corrupt or is seen as beholden
07:17to the interests of the political parties,
07:19those very political parties that brought Lebanon
07:21to the brink of complete collapse.
07:23And Iman, some observers have said that the voting process,
07:26it demonstrates that despite its weakened military capacity,
07:31Hezbollah remains a key political force in Lebanon.
07:34Would you agree?
07:35Yes, Hezbollah is a key political force.
07:38First of all, because of the very nature
07:40of the Lebanese political system
07:42that is based on power sharing
07:44and consociational power sharing among different sects.
07:48And Hezbollah enjoys significant
07:50and still enjoys significant support
07:52within the Shia community.
07:53But let's remember what used to happen
07:55in every single election, at least since 1995.
08:01If a candidate doesn't have the full support
08:04of Hezbollah, they wouldn't be even considered
08:07for the position.
08:08A couple of, a few months ago,
08:11former leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah,
08:13told the Lebanese people,
08:15accept now the candidate we were backing
08:18or we are backing, that Hezbollah was backing at the time,
08:21former lawmaker, Suleiman Franchieh,
08:23a very close ally of Bashar al-Assad,
08:25or you will even regret this name in the future.
08:29What an irony.
08:30Today, Hezbollah is no longer in the military capacity
08:34it used to enjoy.
08:35Bashar al-Assad's regime has collapsed.
08:37And even though in the first round of voting,
08:41Hezbollah and their allies, the Amal Movement,
08:42did not vote for Joseph Aoun,
08:44they only gave themselves a kind of cosmetic,
08:48face-saving approach by delaying the second round
08:52of voting by two hours,
08:53just to pretend they have some negotiations
08:56and to tell their constituency
08:58that they negotiated some kind of deal
09:00that would make the election of Joseph Aoun acceptable.
09:03It is almost pathetic, but what's truly pathetic
09:06is all that time that Lebanon lost without a president.
09:10The name of Joseph Aoun was floated
09:12not a couple of months ago.
09:14It was one of the front runners
09:15since the very beginning of the presidential void,
09:18since the end of the term in office
09:20of former president Michel Aoun.
09:22Why did we lose all that time
09:24if at the time we knew that he was the preferred candidate
09:28or the candidate who enjoyed the widest support?
09:31Why did we have to lose so much time
09:33with a caretaker cabinet
09:35that could not implement any reform,
09:37with a leadership in Lebanon
09:39that didn't enjoy any kind of trust,
09:41neither among the population
09:42nor among the international partners?
09:44Why did we have to go through a war
09:46that destroyed even further Lebanon's infrastructure,
09:50all of this to reach a conclusion
09:53that could have been reached in 2022
09:56and that would have shielded Lebanon
09:58against so much destruction
10:00and further economic collapse?
10:02And would you have confidence then
10:03that he will succeed in putting together a cabinet,
10:06in implementing those long delayed reforms
10:09that you mentioned
10:09and in securing much needed international financial support
10:13for Lebanon?
10:15In Lebanon, constitutionally speaking,
10:18the president doesn't enjoy a lot of powers.
10:22However, the president,
10:23especially in the first weeks after his election,
10:26enjoys a lot of moral leadership and moral power.
10:29And it is the members of parliament
10:33who will have to share the name
10:36of their preferred prime minister with the president.
10:39So this is actually a test
10:42for whether or not the political forces in Lebanon
10:45will be playing a positive role or not.
10:48If in the coming days,
10:50a prime minister who is also immune from corruption,
10:55who hasn't meddled in the horrible governance
11:00that Lebanon has gone through over the last decades,
11:02is named,
11:03if that prime minister alongside the president
11:05form a cabinet swiftly,
11:07rather than having to wait for many months
11:10in the same fashion that we had to go through
11:13during the previous cabinet formation.
11:15So this would be a signal
11:17that there is enough pressure
11:19on the Lebanese political forces
11:21to go through the reform process.
11:23But if we don't have a prime minister
11:26that is as trustworthy as the president,
11:28and if the formation of the cabinet takes ages,
11:31it means that the same political forces
11:33have done what they've always done.
11:35Basically, pretend that they are open to reform
11:39and open to unlock the political deadlock
11:42in order to look good
11:43in front of the international community.
11:45And then going back to what they do best,
11:47stalling any ability for the Lebanese people
11:51to actually dream of better governance,
11:54of less corruption,
11:55of better services and a better future.
11:57Today, it's really critical
11:59because we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people
12:02who have lost their homes,
12:03who cannot go back to their homes.
12:05We're talking about a country
12:06whose infrastructure is completely inexistent
12:10and a financial system,
12:13a banking system that has completely collapsed.
12:16I mean, they're all bankrupt.
12:18So unless there is a serious political will
12:21to make sure that every point
12:23that the president spoke about in his inaugural speech
12:28is implemented,
12:28then that same political class
12:30will be responsible for further pushing Lebanon
12:33into a situation that will destroy any prospect of hope.
12:38Ayman, we'll have to leave it there for now.
12:39Thank you so much for joining us.
12:40That's Ayman Manna,
12:41Executive Director of the Samir Kassir Foundation.
12:45Well, that's it from us for now.