Taif, the Constitution, and the Republic’s Bad Habits (1/2)

In Lebanon, we never tire of invoking the Constitution, the Taif Agreement, parliamentary democracy, and respect for institutions. Yet every presidential crisis, every attempt to form a government, and every disagreement among political leaders brings back the same disputes over their respective powers, the same conflicting interpretations of constitutional provisions, and the same deadlocks that we have come to regard as inevitable. Everyone invokes the Constitution when it supports their position and promptly forgets it when it stands in the way of their ambitions. As for the Taif Agreement, some demand its full implementation while defending practices that distort its principles, while others attribute to it provisions or intentions it never contained.

Before calling for further reforms, it might be useful to revisit a few historical and constitutional facts, to distinguish constitutional provisions from established practices, and established practices from political inventions. We should also ask ourselves whether the difficulties facing our Republic really stem from shortcomings in its institutions or from the way we have grown accustomed to running them.

Three Presidencies, But Who Governs?

The question is all the more relevant in a country where the distribution of powers, intended to prevent their concentration, has often served to multiply decision-making centers and opportunities for obstruction. Can we seriously envisage a political authority simultaneously headed by three figures and expect it to function effectively without becoming a permanent arena for bargaining? The President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, and the Speaker of Parliament have distinct functions. Why, then, do we so often see them interfere in one another’s areas of responsibility, to the point where it becomes difficult to determine who makes decisions, who governs, and who is accountable?

Consider the Speaker of Parliament. Since when does the legislative branch authorize its presiding officer to interfere in government decisions, act as a partner in executive power, receive ambassadors, ministers, military officers, and judges, and issue instructions to them? By what right may the Speaker delay the submission and reading before Parliament of bills designated as urgent, thereby obstructing the application of Article 58 of the Constitution?

We may be told that the Speaker occupies a special place in our political system. But does that position grant powers the Constitution does not recognize? Does the Speaker’s influence not also derive from the ability, through certain political understandings, to secure the election of supportive deputies to the deputy speakership, Parliament’s Bureau, and the chairmanships of important parliamentary committees? Added to this is the fact that the Speaker has come to be regarded as the foremost representative of an entire religious community, while the celebrated notion of mithaqiyya, or communal consensus, has made the Speaker’s consent an almost indispensable condition for any decision. The Speaker thus finds a role in matters of every description, sometimes exercising an authority that overrides that of the constitutionally competent institutions. Is this the normal functioning of a parliamentary system, or a blurring of constitutional powers and responsibilities that we have gradually come to accept through sheer habit?

The President of the Republic Is Not the Leader of a Political Camp

The position of the President of the Republic raises a different problem. Article 60 of the Constitution, both before and after Taif, establishes that the President is not politically accountable, subject to the exceptional cases provided for by the Constitution. How, then, can the President be entrusted with the actual direction of government policy? One cannot exercise executive power, have ministers implement one’s own political agenda, and yet bear no responsibility for that policy before Parliament. As the eminent French jurist Léon Duguit put it, “Where responsibility lies, there lies power.”

Yet this is precisely what those who demand ministerial quotas in the name of the presidency, or even the right to appoint Christian ministers, appear to have forgotten. Since when has the head of state, who is President of all Lebanese citizens, become the exclusive representative of Christians in government? And how can the Prime Minister be held accountable for the government’s policies if some of its ministers answer politically to another authority?

This is not about diminishing the presidency. Quite the contrary. It is about restoring its proper meaning. The President of the Republic is an arbiter and a guide, entrusted with safeguarding the institutions without becoming the leader of a political faction. The President already possesses numerous powers for this purpose: requesting reconsideration of laws and decrees, attending and presiding over Cabinet meetings, raising matters not included on the agenda drawn up by the Prime Minister, requesting extraordinary Cabinet sessions, postponing parliamentary sessions, addressing messages to the Chamber of Deputies, and playing an essential role in constitutional amendments. Moreover, the six-year presidential term enjoys special protection, since it cannot be shortened outside the exceptional constitutional procedures, notably in cases of high treason or violation of the Constitution.

Are these powers not sufficient for the President to fulfill the office’s responsibilities? Why should the President also possess an independent role in government, when the Cabinet must obtain and retain Parliament’s confidence and remains solely politically accountable for its decisions? Public opinion, too, can exert pressure on a government strong enough to bring it down. The President of the Republic, by contrast, is not subject to comparable political accountability. That is precisely why the President must remain above partisan rivalries.

What Taif Really Changed

For decades, we have been told that the Taif Agreement stripped the President of the Republic of powers and transferred them to the Sunni Prime Minister. The claim has been repeated so often that many now regard it as an established fact. It deserves closer examination.

Was Lebanon not already a democratic parliamentary republic under the Constitution of 1926? Had parliamentary conventions not, long before Taif, supplemented and clarified the respective powers and roles of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister? Parliamentary consultations took place before a Prime Minister was designated, and governments appeared before the Chamber of Deputies to seek a vote of confidence before exercising their powers, even though the 1926 Constitution did not expressly provide for these procedures. Conversely, in constitutional practice before Taif, presidential acts also required the countersignature of the Prime Minister, alongside that of the competent minister, in keeping with the parliamentary conventions governing the application of Article 54.

We had therefore adopted parliamentary conventions without necessarily incorporating all of them into the constitutional text. Why claim today that they carried no weight?

The problem is that, since independence, several Presidents of the Republic have exceeded their constitutional powers. Such practices prompted a substantial number of Muslim leaders, along with others, to demand that parliamentary conventions be explicitly incorporated into the Constitution and that limits be placed on presidential intervention. This was one of the purposes of the amendments adopted following Taif. The objective was not to take powers away from one religious community and hand them to another, but to bring the constitutional text into line with the requirements of a parliamentary system in which the government exercises power and bears responsibility for doing so.

It is also worth recalling the circumstances in which the agreement was negotiated. How can anyone maintain that Taif marked a Sunni victory over the Maronite presidency when the discussions took place in the absence of Prime Minister Rachid Karame, Mufti Hassan Khaled, and Nazem Kadri, all assassinated in the period preceding Taif, while Saeb Salam had gone into self-imposed exile in Geneva? Had Syria not, even before the Tripartite Agreement of 1985, established itself as the negotiating party on behalf of the Sunnis?

The same disregard for historical facts appears in the controversy over deadlines for government formation. We continue to hear that the Taif Constitution’s failure to impose a deadline on the Prime Minister was the result of Sunni opposition, particularly that of Saeb Salam. Yet Salam, like Salim Hoss and Hussein Husseini, had called in their respective programs in early 1989 for specific deadlines both for forming a government and for presenting it before Parliament.

Who opposed this proposal? The Lebanese Front deputies attending the Taif negotiations, who rejected the possibility of resolving a disagreement between the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister by submitting the proposed government to Parliament, which would then grant or withhold its confidence. In their view, no arbitration could take precedence over that of the President of the Republic. Why, then, attribute to one side what the other had opposed?

The constitutional mechanisms of paralysis

These historical reminders are particularly important because we continue to debate the nature of our political system without agreeing on what it actually is. The preamble to the Constitution as amended following Taif defines Lebanon as a democratic parliamentary republic. Yet does our system, as it operates in practice, not sometimes resemble an assembly-dominated regime more closely? When a profound disagreement arises over an essential issue, neither the President of the Republic nor the Prime Minister can freely bring about the dissolution of Parliament and call early elections to return the decision to the voters.

Why, moreover, do some insist that the government can no longer seek delegated legislative powers through legislative decrees following Taif? Such procedures exist in parliamentary systems and allow urgent matters to be addressed swiftly, under parliamentary supervision, with Parliament retaining the power to ratify or reject the resulting legislation. Why should this be incompatible with Lebanese parliamentary democracy?

To these difficulties we must add the rules governing the Council of Ministers. Can a government be expected to work regularly and effectively when every Cabinet meeting requires a quorum of two-thirds of its members, as though each meeting involved an exceptional matter such as a constitutional amendment? Why should the dismissal of a minister appointed jointly by the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister require the approval of two-thirds of the minister’s Cabinet colleagues, effectively allowing a minister who refuses to sign a decree approved by the Council of Ministers to escape accountability? And how can it be justified that the resignation of one-third of the ministers is sufficient to bring down the entire government?

We have introduced mechanisms into the ordinary functioning of the executive that allow a minority to obstruct the majority. We then express surprise when governments become paralyzed. Do the blocking third, these qualified majorities, and these repeated requirements for consensus not contribute to making the country ungovernable? It should also be recalled that the blocking-third mechanism was adopted at the request of Christian representatives, with the stated aim of enabling the President of the Republic to halt any Cabinet decision the President found unacceptable.