The Legislative Power: Effectiveness and Independence

The constitutional law enacted on 21 September 1990 enriched the preamble of the Lebanese Constitution with fundamental provisions stipulating that Lebanon is a free and independent homeland, the definitive homeland of all its sons, united within its internationally recognised borders in its land, its people and its institutions, and that its identity and belonging are Arab. Paragraph (c) further provides that Lebanon is a democratic parliamentary republic.

It is from this precise point that one must illuminate the effectiveness of the parliamentary regime established after the Taif Agreement, a regime that has nonetheless demonstrated its inability to build the State and its institutions, and whose faithfulness to the people that elected it on several occasions is legitimately open to question. This domain is acquiring growing importance and is now imposing itself as a vital, intensive and long-term mission, in the wake of a succession of tragic developments made up of wars and political crises confirmed on many occasions. The concept of parliamentarism has never been deemed incompatible with diplomacy, which is by nature a sovereign function devoted to addressing political, economic and social crises without the Lebanese situation improving in the process.

The role of parliamentarians is today called into question in the face of the existential crisis that Lebanon is traversing under the effects of what constitutes the fourth or fifth consecutive Israeli war since 1969, a war that invalidates the credibility of the legislative power as a factor of internal and external stability, owing to the non-observance of universally recognised constitutional principles. The Lebanese political class has for decades been entrenching itself behind the façade of a democratic climate that serves as its shelter for cultivating the confessional sharing of power, clientelism and sectarianism, counter to any other Arab or Western political society that is mindful of democratic principles and their anchoring in stable laws founded on the primacy of law and the State, as well as on the requirement of civic equality, universality and justice.

The examination of parliamentary practices and behaviours since the nineteen-nineties reveals no respect whatsoever for the commonly accepted norms governing legislative production, already severely limited from one year to the next, in a context marked by the flagrant absence of implementing decrees, and where the majority of texts adopted satisfy neither the requirements of human rights nor those of the rule of law. Democratic governance can indeed only be conceived on condition that the power in question conforms to the internal and international constitutional legitimacy that frames it. Respect for internal legality is defined by a Constitution that forms the social contract freely accepted by the people in the entirety of its principles, its rules and its mechanisms, a contract which, when honoured, confers on the State solid democratic credibility and marks it with the seal of stability and prosperity.

None of this has come to pass in this perpetually suspended Lebanon, owing to the inherent vices of majority tyranny, the slowness of legislative production and the absence of any parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, which generally functions on a consensual and mutually accommodating basis with it, so that solutions emerge only in the form of partisan compromises or settlements of a militia-like and totalitarian character.

More serious still, citizens are most of the time unaware of what is actually being plotted. The work of other deputies is often distinguished by excessive opacity, sometimes even prohibitive, or by political indigence in the examination of dossiers, according to certain minority but competent opinions within the current Parliament presided over by Nabih Berri and which remains under extension, without parliamentary initiatives being coordinated through reinforced information-sharing and mutual consultations, nor through technical expertise in drafting bills of a technical character, these experts working within the structures of the executive power, so that a number of projects submitted to the institution originate from successive governments far more than they emanate from the legislative assemblies themselves.

On the legislative level, the influence of Lebanese parliamentarians remains extremely limited in the domain of domestic policy. The majority functions essentially as a rubber-stamp chamber, endorsing bills that have been subject to no prior negotiation before their signing by governments and that deputies cannot amend.

Executive declarations on these matters provoke a debate, then sometimes a non-binding vote, which is itself an exercise in pure rhetorical form and modest utility, rarely filling the chambers of Parliament with any agitation whatsoever, in an institution divided into zones of influence where proposals are concerned, which are not examined with rigour and are subjected to formal votes devoid of any symbolic value likely to interest civil society. These votes do not bind the government in its policies, and the question of institutional performance and of the capacity of institutions to fulfil their role of development and reform remains entirely open.

The prerogatives belonging in law to Parliament also come up against other insurmountable challenges in a country governed by confessional usages, which contradict the democratic foundations that the Lebanese people is supposed to accept, decide upon and respond to according to the logic of direct and credible popular representation. Thus the President of Parliament allows himself, in certain cases, to overstep the attributions of the legislative power, while the rules of procedure reserve for him a relatively extensive framework at the expense of the parliamentarians themselves, and while the role of parliamentary blocs remains limited as an operational reference. Elected assemblies frequently find themselves compelled to respond to the demands of pressure groups or to delegate authority to the executive, or bilaterally to the president of the assembly who acts as he sees fit, without any genuine relationship being formed between parliamentarians as representatives of the whole of the Lebanese people.

The political class has thus succeeded in creating zones of influence to the detriment of the deputies' own capacity to make themselves heard, including at the time of adopting a general budget or financial reform projects that have been stalled for years, and the legislative power thereby transgresses the very principles that the Constitution specifically requires it to guarantee. As for the executive's reactions to these parliamentary initiatives, they oscillate between indifference and criticism emanating from official sources, not as added value but as a simple nuisance within a relationship of mutual facilitation intended to manage crises over the long term, which may even constitute a real obstacle in bilateral relations between the two powers.

The Lebanese parliamentary regime is on the brink of the abyss. Repeated extensions give the impression of an outdated democracy, and this is precisely what one is entitled to anticipate for the coming two years in the lifespan of the current assembly, which is moreover what the politicians in power wish for in rejecting any reasonable change that would allow more flexibility for the benefit of the Lebanese. The political seat in Lebanon is perceived as a prized catch opening onto endless and hereditarily transmitted privileges, as well as onto a form of class hierarchy and arrogance in this regard, in a system where everything likewise ends up being traded in for ever more coveted ministerial posts, distributed among rival political groups competing for the portfolios with the highest budgets.

This deficit in democratic maturity renders the situation all the more disheartening, as few points are gained at the electoral level, nor at the level of equality among all Lebanese before the law and of the equal and non-discriminatory right of each to benefit from its protection, whether in matters of political or other opinion, of the general interest or of the common good, as if the law were required to prohibit all propaganda in favour of war and any call to national, racial or religious hatred constituting an incitement to discrimination, to internal hostility or to violence.

It is well established that the primary guarantee of democratic governance resides in the effectiveness of the legislative power itself, because it is composed of elected assemblies as stipulated by Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, expressing the will of the people, source of sovereignty, in matters of decisions of war and peace.

The legislative power likewise guarantees, and must guarantee as any constitution worthy of the name, the independence of the judiciary and the oversight of the executive under pain of the appropriate legal remedies, in addition to its own independence, in the care that international law takes to protect freedom of expression without hesitation, while ensuring that the exercise of this freedom is inscribed within respect for public order, the freedom of others and the promotion of understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, to the exclusion of all racism and religious fanaticism.

The legislative power constitutes the fundamental regulator of State relations in both the internal and international order. This form of parliamentarism, absent from Lebanon, does not encompass the work of parliamentary assemblies that directly represent the people, express its aspirations and conditions of existence, engage with international legality by defining the necessity of concluding normative international treaties and committing to the protection of human rights of both the individual and the people, thereby advancing forthcoming dossiers with procedures that conform to the texts in force in both orders of internal and international legitimacy, effective and democratic, to which elected representatives can usefully contribute. There is something fundamentally sound in the rules of credible conformity.

It is the call of the new Lebanese Republic.