The constitutional deadline set for submitting parliamentary appeals before the Constitutional Council has expired, and its number has reached 15, which is less than the number submitted in 2018, which amounted to 18 appeals.
In the contested case, the Lebanese Forces deputies have a share in the appeals amounting to 3, divided between an appeal by candidate Paul al-Hamed against Representative Elie Khoury for the Maronite seat in Tripoli, and Gad Ghosn’s appeal against the result of Representative Razi al-Hajj for the Maronite seat in the Matn, in addition to his appeal by the Agoub Bakraladunian prosecutor as well. A third appeal submitted by Amal Abu Zeid against the result of MP Saeed Al-Asmar for the Maronite seat in Jezzine, which is the only appeal submitted by the Free Patriotic Movement, noting that Al-Asmar submitted a second appeal by former MP Ibrahim Azar. On the other hand, the Lebanese Forces submitted one appeal from candidate Elie Sharbashi to the result of Representative Cynthia Zarazir for the minority seat in Beirut I.
In Kesrouan, Josephine Zgheib filed an appeal against the result of Representative Farid El-Khazen, who was also challenged by candidate Shadi Kreidi. The list of real change, and for the right of Salloum and Matar, another appeal was also submitted by the candidate Haider Nasser. This was also submitted against MP Faisal Al-Sayegh for the Druze seat in Beirut and Wadah Al-Sadiq for the Sunni seat, an appeal by Zina Munther.
Most of the appeals are based on arithmetic errors that occurred in pens and registration committees, such as not counting boxes or votes that could change the results, as is the case for Gad Ghosn, who only needs 88 votes to declare his victory, as well as for Karami, where the difference in votes between his list and the list of change reached 41 votes. Some of the appeals are based on falsifying the results, as Josephine Zughaib points out in the appeal she submitted against Al-Khazen, knowing that the acceptance of this appeal by the Constitutional Council, which benefits from it, will not be Zughaib, but rather the candidate of the Lebanese Forces, Shadi Fayyad, because the fractions of the list of forces exceed the fractions of the list of Representative Nemat Afram. What is the expected deadline for deciding the appeals? If we take the previous experience of the Constitutional Council in 2018, the decision on the 18 appeals then took about ten months, due to the new law and its calculations that the members of the Constitutional Council were not accustomed to.
As for this time, it is not expected that the Constitutional Council will decide on the appeals 5 months before, if we calculate the 15-day period specified for the respondents to submit their answers and files, in addition to a period of no less than 4 months that members of the Constitutional Council need to study the appeals.
