Lebanese democrat Chibli Mallat, welcoming UN call for free and fair elections in Lebanon, proposes presidential elections within a month

Presidential candidate Chibli Mallat urged Lebanon to follow the United Nations Security Council’s statement issued earlier on Tuesday and hold free and just presidential elections in the country within a month.

“It is crucial that Lebanon elects a president. Lebanon must regain its constitutional heritage,” Mallat said.

Mallat urged the parliament to convene under the constitution and to open a presidential campaign that would lead to the election of a new president within two weeks up to a month. Mallat pleaded to the Lebanese Parliament as the institution responsible under the country’s constitution to elect the president.

Mallat, a prominent Lebanese academic and human rights lawyer who is touring the United States as part of his campaign to bring Lebanon into line with its international commitments, was commenting on the U.N. Security Council’s September 2004 resolution which demanded Syria to withdraw its troops from Syria and to allow Lebanon to hold free presidential elections without Syrian interference. 

Mallat has worked actively to prompt the U.N. to encourage Lebanon to replace Syrian-appointed President Emile Lahoud and bring the country to hold free presidential elections under UNSCR Resolution 1559 (2 September 2004). No elections were held, and Lahoud's mandate was extended for three years by a constitutional amendment held under threat to Lebanese MPs, including former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

Mallat had declined to hold office in Lebanon under Syrian domination and decided to run for president in order to accelerate the return to democracy in his country.

In a unanimous statement, the UN Security Council noted  “that other provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) have yet to be implemented, particularly ...  free and fair presidential elections conducted according to the Lebanese constitutional rules, without foreign interference and influence.”
“It is clear that the extension constitutes a violation of the international law, and must be ended without delay,” Mallat said.
Another watershed event in current Middle East politics which prompted Mallat to call for presidential elections and to run for president were the mass anti-Syrian demonstrations that swept through central Beirut in the wake of the killing of popular Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. These demonstrations pulled at least 150,000 Lebanese to the streets and marked the onset of what the Lebanese call the Cedar Revolution, a movement that claims Lebanese political independence from Syria.  It culminated in a mass rally held on March 14, 2005 in Beirut, with over one million people demonstrating in the center of Beirut.

“The Cedar Revolution is the turning point in Middle East history,” said Mallat in Yale, where he was as part of his speaking tour.

Mallat, together with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and deputies Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri, were instrumental in bringing about today’s U.N. Security Council statement, which calls for the implementation of the items of Resolution 1559 not yet achieved. Mallat emphasised the resolution’s democratic clause as a priority. The clause stipulates free and just presidential elections in Lebanon without foreign interference or influence. 

Mallat said the Lebanese government should have been to New York after the issuing of Resolution 1559 to promote the democratic clause, given that the extension in the president’s term was forced on Lebanon, as manifested by international documents and former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam’s statements on the pressure on the extension. Mallat said Khaddam had verified what was already known by all Lebanese, and confirmed in the Larsen, Fitzgerald and Mehlis reports, that the extension was the cause of all the upheaval in Lebanon since 2004, and the killing of Hariri and over 40 other people in a spate of assassinations since October 1, 2004.

Appealing to the media to assume their historic responsibilities at this turning point,  Mallat proposed to other candidates that they follow his model of a democratic and open campaign, present a program to the Lebanese people, and allow their representatives in Parliament to choose the new president.