Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri cleared up the uncertainty surrounding the May municipal elections by declaring that the elections would not be held if it could not also be organized in South Lebanon, where artillery exchanges between Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been ongoing since October 8, 2023.
“There will be no municipal elections without South Lebanon,” said Berri in an interview with local channel Al-Jadeed. Commenting on the statement of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, who urged the Free Patriotic Movement on Tuesday not to take part in a parliamentary session to extend the terms of municipal councils to force the government to organize the elections, while excluding regions under permanent military operations (the south of the country), the Speaker of the House and leader of the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement replied, “Geagea must understand that I have no intention of separating South Lebanon from the rest of Lebanon.” According to him, “the seriousness of the latter’s remarks lies in federalism,” thus attributing to the leader of the LF the desire to turn Lebanon into a federation, whilst in his statement on the subject of the municipal elections, Geagea warned against the persistence of a vacuum at local government level.
The comments of the Speaker of the House indicate a parliamentary desire to postpone, for the second year in a row, the election of municipal councils and mokhtars.
In fact, Nabih Berri seems intent on calling a parliamentary meeting to this end, as the Chamber’s office will be holding a meeting on Wednesday to discuss issues that could be placed on the agenda of a plenary session. However, this meeting can only take place if the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) bloc takes part, since the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb and independent MPs boycott parliamentary meetings on the grounds that the House’s priority, per the Constitution, should be the election of a president, not legislation.
However, FPM leader Gebran Bassil remains vague about his bloc’s possible participation in a plenary session. At the end of the weekly meeting of the FPM’s political bureau, he indicated that his decision would depend on the level of preparation of the Ministry of the Interior.
In his interview with Al-Jadeed, Nabih Berri did not comment on Bassil’s remarks about the municipal elections, but he did make it clear that he did not appreciate his comments on the clashes at the southern border. “In his logic, Gebran wants to dissociate the southern and Gaza fronts, but that can’t work,” he said. “The unity of the fronts is well and truly established, whether they like it or not,” added Berri, who felt that “the rules of engagement have changed.” According to him, “the Persian carpet (Iran) has shown Israel that times have changed,” alluding to Tehran’s drone and missile strike against the Hebrew state on Saturday night.
