Fun With Election Day

Tomorrow’s attempt to gather the MPs and get a president elected for Lebanon will be attempt number five (or six?). There’s little, if any, smell of agreement or “consensus” in the air.

Also any iffy agreement on General Michel Suleiman/Sleiman will require an amendment to the constitution. Unfortunately, with the Syrian goons gone, gone are also the good old days of amending the constitution in about fifteen minutes and by a mere show of hands.

Reading what passes for news: Presidential Election Postponed till December 7

"There will probably be no election tomorrow," MP Butros Harb, a leading Christian figure of the ruling majority, told AFP.

MP Ali Hassan Khalil also said a postponement of the Friday voting session is "probable."

The mind boggles. [The above statements were made hours before the postponement.] These two are MPs, slated to vote, one hopes before kingdom come, on a new prez. They both are in Beirut, and one of them is a leading candidate.

How is it that yours truly, a mere reader of news, a world away from the action and totally uninvolved in the electoral process, knows more than these MPs do? Fellows go home, there will be NO election tomorrow Friday Nov 30, I GUARANTEE it. (Damn I am good, as I write this, E-Day postponed to December 7, and the Naharnet story was edited)

Another MP, Aoun, no, not super-crazy Michel Aoun, but Selim Aoun who belongs to the wacko’s bloc in parliament:

Aoun said that, "in any case, reaching an agreement over the army commander does not resolve the crisis because there are still many lingering issues, including the formation of the next government, the amendment of the electoral law and the arms of Hizbullah," the anti-Israeli group spearheading the opposition.

Translation: when you cannot solve a very complicated problem, don’t focus on it alone. Try to solve it simultaneously and contemporaneously with ten other equally intractable problems. It’s the Lebanese way.

Now if you want to talk constitutional amendment you got to go to the oracle of Ain el Tineh. Here is Speaker of the House Nabih Berri, open to the idea of amendment:

Berri explained that there were four ways to amend the constitution.

Thanks Nabih, I know. You can’t find the one way to FOLLOW the constitution but you have FOUR ways to change it. My favorite is number three, the one where you drop the constitution down the toilet, flush, and then wait to see what comes out on the other side.

More seriously, none of these ways may be CONSTITUTIONAL. One involves the prez. With no prez, that’s out. One involves the government which Berri and friends deem ILLEGAL. ALL ways involve the parliament. However the constitution says: with no prez, parliament can do NOTHING before proceeding to the election. We’ll see.

And in a repeat of the great canard of 2007 Berri added:

"…I'm staying in the waiting room until they (feuding camps) come to an agreement;

See, the horse’s arse still likes to believe that he is a neutral arbiter, having espoused 220% of the agenda of the Hezbo/Aoun side.

In other earth shattering news, Brother-Emir-Ambassador Abdul Aziz Khoja

If consensus was [sic] reached on Gen. Suleiman, the [Saudi] kingdom would support this issue.

If a “consensus” were reached to make a donkey prez of Lebanon, who could argue with that? Surely not a Saudi. (And trust me it’s happened before, not the consensus part, the donkey part).

Stay tuned for further developments regarding Groundhog Day, err I mean Election Day 2007 (2008?)