President Emmanuel Macron’s personal envoy for Lebanon, Jean-Yves Le Drian, begins his mission in Beirut on Wednesday. Objective: to unblock the election of a new president after months of political vacuum.
Jean-Yves Drian, former boss of the Quai d’Orsay, plunges into a completely paralyzed Lebanese seraglio, where local, regional and international issues have been parasitizing the election of a new tenant at the Palais de Baabda since October 2022.
>> “We loved him but we no longer love him”: in Lebanon the population feels betrayed by Emmanuel Macron
On the spot, the personal envoy of the Head of State begins, Wednesday, June 21, a tour of meals to measure the extent of the blockage. The Lebanese parliament has already failed 12 times to elect a successor to Michel Aoun. Jean-Yves Le Drian’s roadmap looks like an impossible mission, but he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. He is well acquainted with the Lebanese politicians he frequented when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and enjoys a certain international support. We recognize that France has a form of historical preeminence in the management of the Lebanese file.
During the meeting between Emmanuel Macron and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman at the Elysee Palace last Friday, the two leaders called “to quickly end the political vacancy” . Knowing also that Arabia is in the process of normalizing its relations with Iran, the lines could move in Beirut. But Jean-Yves Le Drian will have to arm himself with patience in his mission.
A consensus not found?
The current blockage is linked to the mode of political governance in Lebanon which is summed up in the formula of “consensual democracy”. The President of the Republic, which is a position reserved for Maronites, is not elected by direct universal suffrage but by all 128 deputies, which means that he must be dubbed by Christians but also by Muslim parliamentarians. . However, the parliament is, in addition, divided between the camp of the sovereignists, anti-Syrian and anti Hezbollah, which proposes the name of Jihad Azour, an IMF executive, and that close to the party of God allied to Christian forces which supports , he, the candidacy of Sleiman Frangié, a local political baron close to Bashar Al-Assad.
Paradoxically, France supported this Frangié candidacy by linking it with the appointment of a new Sunni Prime Minister. A “2 in 1” formula that has fizzled out. Disillusioned, the Lebanese see Jean-Yves Le Drian arrive with fatalism and indifference because they have no illusions about his chances of success. The only thing they are really looking forward to is the arrival of one to two million Lebanese expatriates who will arrive in Beirut this summer, their suitcases full of cash, like a breath of fresh air a moribund local economy. A way also to cheer them up, at least for a summer.