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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
On September 1, 1920, General Gouraud proclaimed the
establishment of Greater Lebanon with its present boundaries and
with Beirut as its capital. The first Lebanese constitution was
promulgated on May 23, 1926, and subsequently amended several
times; it was still in effect as of late 1987. Modeled after that
of the French Third Republic, it provided for a unicameral
parliament called the Chamber of Deputies, a president, and a
Council of Ministers, or cabinet. The president was to be elected
by the Chamber of Deputies for one six-year term and could not be
reelected until a six-year period had elapsed; deputies were to be
popularly elected along confessional lines. The first and only
complete census that had been held in Lebanon as of 1987 took place
in 1932 and resulted in the custom of selecting major political
officers according to the proportion of the principal sects in the
population
(see The Basis of Government
, ch. 4). Thus, the
president was to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a
Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies a Shia
Muslim. Theoretically, the Chamber of Deputies performed the
legislative function, but in fact bills were prepared by the
executive and submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, which passed
them virtually without exception. Under the Constitution, the
French high commissioner still exercised supreme power, an
arrangement that initially brought objections from the Lebanese
nationalists. Nevertheless, Charles Dabbas, a Greek Orthodox, was
elected the first president of Lebanon three days after the
adoption of the Constitution.
At the end of Dabbas's first term in 1932, Bishara al Khuri
(also cited as Khoury) and Emile Iddi (also cited as Edde) competed
for the office of president, thus dividing the Chamber of Deputies.
To break the deadlock, some deputies suggested Shaykh Muhammad al
Jisr, who was chairman of the Council of Ministers and the Muslim
leader of Tripoli, as a compromise candidate. However, French high
commissioner Henri Ponsot suspended the constitution on May 9,
1932, and extended the term of Dabbas for one year; in this way he
prevented the election of a Muslim as president. Dissatisfied with
Ponsot's conduct, the French authorities replaced him with Comte
Damien de Martel, who, on January 30, 1934, appointed Habib as Saad
as president for a one-year term (later extended for an additional
year).
Emile Iddi was elected president on January 30, 1936. A year
later, he partially reestablished the Constitution of 1926 and
proceeded to hold elections for the Chamber of Deputies. However,
the Constitution was again suspended by the French high
commissioner in September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II.
Data as of December 1987
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