The Lebanese Campaign for a Senate

During an official visit to France last week, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, while meeting with Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe and head of the French Senate Gerard Larcher, made statements that have largely been interpreted as a fresh commitment to an often-overlooked article of the Taif Accord.

“The Lebanese constitution establishes a senate, and senate is the basic and salutary resolution to creating balance in states,” Sleiman told French officials, noting that a necessary precursor to creating a senate in Lebanon is “setting up the national committee to abolish political confessionalism, which will naturally take a long time.”

The president was referring to Article 22 of the constitution, which integrated the stipulation of establishing a senate made in the Taif Accord.

The Taif Accord – which in 1989 helped end Lebanon’s bloody 15-year civil war – essentially envisions a bicameral government, where parliament is elected on a non-sectarian basis and sectarian representation is instead relegated to the second chamber, the senate. Article 7 of the accord, later formalized into Article 22 of the constitution, outlines that with the election of the first Chamber of Deputies on a national, non-sectarian basis, a senate shall be formed and all religions shall be represented in it.

But as lawyer Marwan Saqr, who specializes in constitutional law, points out, the road to forming a senate is long.

“We will need an amendment to the constitution and to add a chapter on the senate… You need to find an electoral regime for the senate; how are they [senators] going to be elected? On the same basis as the members of parliament? Or if they will have a special electoral law?” Saqr said. “Then the first elected members will have to draft their own regulations.”

Saqr explained that this would be presided over by the “national commission” that President Sleiman referred to, and the end result would have to be voted on in parliament, necessitating a two-thirds majority to pass.

“We don’t even have any idea about the numbers of the members of the senate. It’s a very broad idea,” he said.

The idea is still embryonic, but it needs to be explored in light of the evolving political situation in Lebanon.

Although a senate is outlined in the constitution, Sleiman’s comments have generally been interpreted as an indication of support toward the Taif Accord – a coupling that could be problematic as many factions would like the accord amended and not implemented in full.

A case in point is Kataeb party leader and former President Amin Gemayel’s manifesto “Rebuilding Lebanon”, published in 1992. In the text, Gemayel accepts the idea of a senate while simultaneously calling for the president to be endowed with more power, as Taif relinquished many of the post’s duties to the Sunni prime minister.

“His (or her) new stature would avoid both the theoretical omnipotence described in the 1926 constitution and the real impotence required by the Taif Agreement,” Gemayel wrote.

Despite Gemayel’s contentions toward Taif in whole, the Kataeb party has interpreted Sleiman’s statement as an expression of a need for a new direction for the government following the June 7 parliamentary elections.

“Even the president of the republic [while] in Paris has expressed his concern,” said Salim Sayegh, the second vice president of the Kataeb Party and a professor of International Law. “Everyone in Lebanon agrees we have to sit and discuss what the solution will be.”

In an interview in Friday’s edition of Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyassah, Sami Gemayel pressed for a roundtable dialogue to be held after the elections on the development of the Lebanese system, saying that the situation of the past four years could not continue and that the Lebanese should find new solutions to ensure the proper functioning of the state.

This is perhaps the reason Sleiman invoked Taif via statements on creating a senate. Although Taif forms the basis of the constitution, it has never been implemented in full.  A veiled recommendation of a return to the original agreement may be Sleiman’s suggestion for a new direction for the government, which will be needed following the elections.

Following the bloody events of last May, the Doha Agreement was drafted and has since been the current template for governance. But although it was successful in ending the violent political stalemate, Doha is still an ad-hoc agreement created to “reach two or three specific goals, like the election of the president, stopping the violence on the streets of Beirut and starting a dialogue,” Saqr noted.

Now, with the approach of the June 7 parliamentary elections, the agreement will have satisfied its goals, and thus expires, Saqr said.

This expiration means that the new government will move forward in a different direction. Sleiman’s leaning toward Taif and the round-table suggested by the Kataeb appear to be different ideas as to what this new direction should be.

Whether or not the solution will be one that more closely mirrors Taif and begins the process of instituting a senate is yet to be determined, but the definite need for a new direction following the election appears certain.