Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1998, pages 53, 91

Special Report

Gen. Emile Lahoud, Who Reunited Shattered Lebanese Armed Forces, Elected Lebanon’s 11th President

By Carole Dagher

Gen. Emile Lahoud was unanimously elected on Oct. 15 by Lebanon’s parliament as the 11th post-independence president of Lebanon. Of 128 members of parliament, 118, equally divided between Christians and Muslims, voted for the 62-year-old army commander-in-chief.

Lahoud’s election was secured after the Lebanese cabinet amended clause three of Article 49 in the Constitution which bars high-ranking civil servants from running for president while they are in office. The government’s proposal was then sent to the parliament, which voted to amend Article 49 for “one time only and exceptionally.”

The Constitution had already been amended in 1995, at the end of the six-year term in office of President Elias Hrawi, to allow for an extension of his mandate for another three years.

Lahoud’s election was expected since polls indicating that 60 percent of the Lebanese public, from all regions and religions, favored it. But it only became certain when President Hrawi announced his selection as his successor after a Lebanese-Syrian summit in Damascus on Oct. 5 between Lebanese President Hrawi and Syrian President Assad.

General Lahoud, who did not attend the parliament session, was escorted by house speaker Nabih Berri for a protocol visit to outgoing President Hrawi at the presidential palace in Baabda.

In a rare sight to Lebanese, the general, who has never given press interviews, was seen in civilian clothes. The road to Baabda was decorated with Lebanese flags and banners. One read: “The dream has come true and the dawn of the future has begun.”

Lahoud will remain army commander until taking the presidential oath of office on Nov. 24, a day after Hrawi’s constitutional term expires.

A festive atmosphere gripped all areas of the country following the election process that was broadcast live on Lebanese TV. In most of the major cities and villages across the country, from Tyre and Sidon in the south to Tripoli in the north and Baalbeck and Zahle in the Bekaa Valley, and in Lahoud’s village of Baabdat in Mount Lebanon, people celebrated, singing and dancing the traditional dabke folk dance in the streets, while automobile convoys with beeping horns jammed the streets and passengers handed out free soft drinks.

Lahoud’s election marks the second time an army commander has become head of state.

The manner in which both officials and the Lebanese people greeted Lahoud’s election demonstrated what newspapers called “a national consensus on Lahoud’s ability to rule the country.”

The Beirut Stock Exchange also witnessed a sharp rise in volume as it became clear that the army commander was heading for victory in the presidential election.

While Muslim support was largely assured, the national consensus over Lahoud included Christian communities as well. Although by unwritten agreement the president is traditionally a Maronite, President Hrawi’s popularity among his own community was almost nonexistent, and his relations with Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir went through many strains.

It was therefore relevant that the Maronite Bishops’Council, headed by Patriarch Sfeir, praised the choice of General Lahoud as the country’s next president. Although the Council expressed some reservations about “the way the choice was made” it also stressed its hope that General Lahoud will help solve the country’s problems.

Lebanon’s newly elected president has a reputation as a “workaholic” and a man of integrity, able to curb corruption.

First and foremost, however, the general is widely credited with carrying out the difficult task of reuniting the Lebanese army, which had splintered into feuding Christian and Muslim militias during 15 years of civil war. Lahoud accomplished this primary objective by restructuring army brigades to include both Christian and Muslim elements.

He also managed to halt religious and political interventions that once pervaded the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which emerged as an efficient and non-corrupt body. Lebanese hope he will be able to do the same in public administration and government institutions.

At the eve of his entering the political arena, General Lahoud can look back to a long military career that saw him help re-establish state authority after the end of the civil strife in 1990.

A Long Military Career

Born on Oct. 10, 1936, the son of Gen. Jamil Lahoud, who held a ministerial position during the 1958-64 term of former President Fouad Shehab, Gen. Emile Lahoud enrolled in a military school in 1956 and became a naval officer in 1959. He later earned a maritime engineering degree from Britain and completed additional military training in the United States.

After his return to Lebanon, he was promoted to navy commander in the 1970s and held several senior positions at the defense ministry before becoming army commander-in-chief on Nov. 28, 1989.

With U.S. military assistance and Syrian cooperation and support, General Lahoud has been able to rebuild the 60,000-strong Lebanese Armed Forces, made up of 12 brigades, including five deployed along the zone Israel occupies in southern Lebanon.

Under Lahoud’s command, the LAF disarmed and dissolved the former militias and restored order around Palestinian refugee camps. It also took part in a vast campaign to eradicate drug cultivation in the Bekaa Valley, receiving strong backing from neighboring Syria.

General Lahoud’s election marks the second time that an army commander has become head of state since General Fouad Chehab ruled the country following Lebanon’s 1958 civil war.

In addition to a fight against corruption and sectarianism in the public sector, Lahoud is expected to reinforce cooperation and coordination with Syria, especially regarding the Middle East peace process.

Syria set the tone the day of the general’s election with an expression in the Damascus Al Baath newspaper of “confidence” that Lebanon’s newly elected president would follow President Hrawi’s footsteps. Hrawi and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad signed a cooperation agreement in 1991 based on “Fraternity, Cooperation and Coordination.”

President Lahoud also is expected to support Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s reconstruction program. “The army is the guarantee for the reconstruction of Lebanon,” reads the slogan on an army publicity poster that can be seen at many Beirut road junctions.

Prime Minister Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, in accordance with Lebanon’s unwritten “national pact,” visited Lahoud to congratulate him right after the election took place. Hariri told reporters that he will work closely and “with no limits” with the president-elect for the benefit of Lebanon. He also congratulated the Lebanese, saying the positive local, regional and international reception of Lahoud will surely be reflected in the country’s economy and in all sectors.

Battle over the Cabinet

After General Lahoud formally takes charge on Nov. 23, the present cabinet must resign and consultations with deputies will begin on appointing the new premier. (Incumbent Rafiq Hariri is expected to remain in office.) Then the prime minister will consult with the president on the new cabinet make-up.

House Speaker Nabih Berri was quoted as predicting political infighting over the formation of a new cabinet. He said it should not be made up of technocrats, but rather politicians who, in his words, would make the right decisions to confront the Israeli enemy.

One of the dominant players and a permanent minister in all post-war cabinets, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, visited Damascus immediately after General Lahoud’s election to discuss with Syrian officials his own political future within the next cabinet, according to the media. Jumblatt, who has been in charge of the Ministry of the Displaced, and his eight parliamentary allies and Socialist Party members boycotted the parliament vote to protest the election of a military figure to the presidency.

Few share Jumblatt’s fears of an army commander-in-chief on the top rung in Lebanon. “The same way he kept politics out of the military,” deputy Prime Minister Michel Murr explained, “Lahoud will not involve the military in politics.”

Sources close to House Speaker Nabih Berri, a Shi’i Muslim, were quoted saying that democracy will prevail in Lebanon because General Lahoud will safeguard constitutional institutions. Lahoud is also expected to restore balance among the governing powers and to put an end to the practice of the “troika,” where the three heads of state, of government and of parliament were making joint decisions. The “troika,” has been a clear distortion of the parliamentary regime and of the checks-and-balances system.