The race has begun to intensify with the arrival in Beirut today of a European judicial delegation from France, Germany and Luxembourg to investigate bank executives and possibly owners and employees on charges of corruption and financial transfers from Lebanese banks abroad between the European and Lebanese judiciaries, in conjunction with a new expected confusion in the black market with today’s circulation of a Lebanon bank on trade and beneficiary of foreign exchange operations, with the continuation of paying money to electric vessels anchored off the Lebanese coast , without agreeing on an electricity loan that needs a cabinet, which ministers of the aunist bloc still oppose to his story.
This position adds to a new point of difference with Hezbollah, which is the separation from it on the issue of the white paper, as the strong Lebanese bloc could nominate a figure for whom it will vote for the presidency of the republic.
According to information, Hezbollah will build on what is requested, with a focus on a change in Hezbollah’s agenda, in terms of preparing for developments the region may witness in terms of possible clashes between the “axis of resistance” to which it belongs Hezbollah , and Israel and the axis it belongs to led by the United States with vibrations around the world.
And these serious repercussions, when the electricity supply became zero hours, in most regions, an international report revealed that Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, ranked 240th, that is, only two degrees ahead of the lastly, among the cities with the worst living conditions, in terms of cost, and the drop in purchasing power and the cost of housing, with continuous collapses in the exchange rate of the national currency.
In the presidential arena, informed political sources explained to Al-Liwaa that next week will start with moving the presidential dossier through a convening of the electoral session and meetings between multiple parliamentary blocs to coordinate positions, as well as showing images related to the names of the presidential nomination club intervention of some forces, in particular of the Free Patriotic Movement. The sources underlined that this movement does not necessarily lead to a result, but it is better than stalemate, underlining that there is no concrete initiative to transfer the presidency issue to the final solution, provided that it is necessary to wait as long as the Speaker of the Chamber of representatives may present on the opposition’s request for open polling sessions.
Lebanese or European judiciary
With the return of the Lebanese magistrates, or at least some of them, to resume work in the courthouses, public opinion is divided at home, on the role that will be entrusted to the European investigative mission, under the title of the investigation, between inconsistent information about the parties that will be asked to be heard, and whether Riad Salameh, Governor of the Banque du Liban, is among them or not.
At the moment the criminal justice investigations are widening by fighting what has been defined as the fight against corruption, starting from the Automobile Authority, the real estate departments, up to the ministries of labour, health and education, against the background the creation of a file allowing for the adoption of disciplinary measures against public sector employees, within the scope of consistency with the requirements of the International Monetary Fund on cooperation and conclusion of the loan agreement promised to Lebanon for one year or more ago, and nothing was gained from it.
European investigation into corruption
Instead, a judicial delegation from France, Germany and Luxembourg arrives in Lebanon today to interrogate 30 financial and banking personalities, including, among others, the governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh.
Information indicates that the mission of the European delegations will start next Monday and will be divided into several phases. In a first phase limited to five days, from Monday to Friday, about 15 people will be investigated, excluding Riad Salameh, and will include senior central bank officials and executives of Lebanese banks. The prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, instructed the head of the Central Criminal Investigation Department, Colonel Nicolas Saad, to inform the persons to be questioned of the dates of the hearings.
To this end, Oweidat met two delegations from the French and German embassies in his office yesterday afternoon, and they discussed the modalities for the arrival of the judicial delegations and the definition of the cooperation mechanism between the two sides and the procedures that they will accompany it.
Oweidat said the mission of the European judicial delegation, which will arrive in Lebanon next Monday, is to question people who have previously been questioned by the Lebanese judiciary as witnesses, with the exception of one person who will be questioned as a suspect. This delegation wants to explore where the prosecution letters are in the file handled by Justice Ziyad Abu Haidar, whose investigation has been halted due to requests for a reply that have been filed against him.
He specified that the delegation visit could be followed by other visits, but not necessarily consecutively, but according to need.
He revealed that there are 15 people to be questioned, excluding the governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh.
He specified that the files that will be investigated by the judicial delegation fall within the chapter of corruption, which is the same file of the Appeal Prosecutor’s Office, suspended for some time for the reasons I mentioned above.
It has been learned that five banks are involved, and they are linked to correspondent banks, regarding the handling of wire transfers, as well as employees of the suspect banks, including a person from the Aoun family.
Amidst all this, the presidential horizon is still blocked inside and out, despite the ongoing movement of more than one block and parliamentary group. This negative reality was confirmed by the Director General of Public Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, who said at a meeting at Al-Makassed hospital on Saturday, in response to a question about possible mediation in the presidential file: “I don’t miss a suicide bomber in any file…The local and international circumstances they’re not helping at the moment.”
But the novelty is what was announced by the member of the strong Lebanese bloc, Asaad Dergham: On Tuesday we have a meeting that will resolve the question of the name and the consensual person we could vote for in the next session.
Thus, it does not appear that the presidential election will see any significant developments in the upcoming election session this week, with the exception of the announcement by member of the strong Lebanese bloc, Asaad Dergham, to move away from the stereotype of the white paper, as he said in a TV interview: We have a meeting on Tuesday that will sort out the denomination and consensual person we might vote on in the next session. While the movement of independent and change representatives is still unable to reach an agreement on a specific name to agree on.
Some independent deputies who make visits and meetings with political representatives confirm that they do not yet agree on any candidate, and that the positions are always the same divergent due to the existing political divisions, and that lies are being worked on in an attempt to agree a common name among most of the forces and blocs. The Nepalese are on both sides of the division and on the future president’s program and action plan, who adopts a main title, which is salvation, even if the opposition forces abandon Michel Moawad’s candidacy if the president’s name and program are agreed.
And on the part of the “deputies for change”, their sources confirm that issues with this group still range from disagreement on one name, rather there is a basket of three or four names that are under discussion (Ziyad Baroud, Salah Hanin, Nassif Hitti and Issam Khalifa) and several meetings were held to deliberate There are options, but no one has taken a definitive decision or pushed for adopting a specific option. So everything remains as is until further notice.
Representative Asaad Dergham’s announcement of the strong Lebanese bloc’s approach to nominate its presidential election candidate at a meeting that the bloc will hold tomorrow, Tuesday, instead of voting with a white paper, as it has done during the last ten electoral sessions , led to great discontent with the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, MP Gebran Bassil, and within the bloc, because the latter intended to announce this approach himself immediately after the bloc meeting, and not as was the case for Congressman Dhargham, given that the bloc’s adoption of this option is considered a shift of its position on the presidential election, which could lead to shifting the deadlock in the presidential election file and shuffling the newspapers were renewed and would have been more helpful not to disclose the matter prematurely.
Sources close to the bloc have revealed that the confusion and resentment that prevails among bloc members go beyond what MP Dergham announced on the presidential election issue, Bassil’s unilateral actions and his attempt to limit everything related to presidential elections in his person, as if the other members were false witnesses who do not have the right to indulge in the debate, nor to know their opinions, especially regarding what is reported on the tendency to nominate a person from outside the bloc, and not the internally, which has led some members to hint that they are not engaged in the decision to vote for the candidate to be announced by the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, and to vote, either with a white paper, or For one of the candidates whose names are proposed by the opposition, to express their rejection of this abolitionist method, to all those who can apply within the bloc, in particular to the deputy Ibrahim Kanaan, who considers what is happening an open attempt to exclude him above all from standing as a candidate in the presidential elections, because he constitutes a competitor, with whom Basil is not at ease, therefore, nominating a candidate from outside the bloc , try to exclude him from the candidacy in the name of the blockade.
As for Hezbollah’s stance on the strong Lebanese bloc’s tendency to nominate a presidential candidate, and let the coalition vote with the white paper, the sources indicated that if the bloc votes for whoever it wants, that means a decrease in the number of white papers for the party and its allies, and obviously this will increase the tension in relations between the two parties towards the worst, but obviously the transformation needed to elect a new president of the republic will not happen, because the key to controlling the electoral session remains in the hands of Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, and not in the hands of Basil or anyone else.
