The chronic and persistent Lebanese crisis will witness two key events this week. On June 18, the Constitutional Council — which is authorized to consider appeals resulting from parliamentary or presidential elections, and to examine whether the laws passed by parliament conform with the Lebanese Constitution — will effectively cease to exist. On June 20, the legal term of parliament will expire. The two events have a direct and organic relationship.
As previously noted by Al-Monitor, it has become evident that the Lebanese authorities and the entire political class in Lebanon have found it impossible to agree on a new election law to conduct the next parliamentary election. Due to this failure, and in order to avoid creating a parliamentary vacuum, a parliamentary majority consisting of 97 out of 128 deputies approved a law issued on May 31 extending the term of the current parliament until Nov. 20, 2014. However, two parties objected to the extension and used their constitutional right to challenge the law in question: President Michel Suleiman, who is constitutionally authorized to exercise this right, and Gen. Michel Aoun, the most influential Christian leader, who filed a similar challenge based on a constitutional provision that grants the same right to at least 10 deputies.
The two challenges filed against the extension law were referred to the Constitutional Council on June 2 and 4. The council is required to issue a decision on such challenges within 15 days.
The concurrence of these dates and events is quite remarkable. The Constitutional Council is legally bound to issue a ruling before June 19 regarding the constitutionality of the extension of parliament. In the event that the extension is considered unconstitutional, parliament would have to discuss the ruling within less than 24 hours, which could result in three possibilities: passing another law authorizing the extension of the parliamentary term for a shorter period of time, holding immediate parliamentary elections or falling into a parliamentary vacuum.
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