FPM Preparing to Challenge Parliament Extension Next Week
The Free Patriotic Movement is preparing to challenge the extension of the parliament's mandate, which will come into force on Tuesday.
Sources close to FPM told al-Joumhouria newspaper published on Saturday that the final challenge draft will be ready by Tuesday, when the draft-law will be published in the Official Gazette.
Sources expected that lawmakers loyal to the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc, which is comprised of the Tashnag party, Marada movement and the FPM, would join FPM chief Michel Aoun's party in challenging the extension.
FPM lawmakers resorted to boycott the extension session while Marada Movement and Tashnag Party representatives in the bloc attended the session. But members of Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh's bloc voted for the extension as Tashnag's two lawmakers voted against it.
The FPM had also challenged the first tenure extension in June 2013 before the Constitutional Council.
The Constitutional Council failed to meet in 2013 to discuss the FPM challenge due to the absence of members close to Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat, who both backed the extension.
On Wednesday, the political deadlock in Lebanon deepened after lawmakers voted once again to delay elections and announcing it would extend its mandate until 2017.
The extension decision was met by a huge popular dismay.
The extension session was boycotted by Aoun's lawmakers and the Kataeb party, which is affiliated to the March 14 alliance.
The lawmakers, who voted in favor of the draft-law, claim they need to extend their own term in office because the security situation is too dire to allow holding elections amid Syria's civil war.
They also say extending parliament's mandate will prevent another power vacuum from forming in a country already divided along sectarian and regional lines.
Lebanon has been without a head of state since May, when President Michel Suleiman's six-year term ended without a successor.
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