It was remarkable to see Lebanese MPs last Friday [May 31], trying to sneak into parliament in downtown Beirut, either through side roads leading to alternate entrances to the building, or disguised by their use of “non-official” vehicles without the famous blue-colored license plates reserved for Lebanese MPs’ cars.

The reason behind this subterfuge was their need to attend a legislative session dedicated to the adoption of one single item: the extension for an additional 17 months of their four-year term, which ends on June 20. This move angered a number of pro-democracy activists who gathered at the entrance to parliament and pelted each arriving MP voting for the extension with a barrage of tomatoes, eggs and water.

The issue does not merely revolve around a democratic principle worth defending, nor is it the consequence of an inability to agree on a new electoral law that would govern upcoming elections. In fact, it seems to go beyond such matters as can be seen in the following observations made at the time when the extension vote was held:

First, the Lebanese MPs, in their explanation of the so-called “reasons” that “necessitated” the extension of their term, said that a “force majeure” prevented the holding of elections; namely, the deteriorating “security situation” in a number of Lebanese areas. They invoked this reason to guarantee that their vote not be overturned by the Lebanese Constitutional Council, which is a supreme constitutional judicial body endowed with the authority to scrutinize laws adopted by parliament. Any legal or administrative reason used to justify the extension would have been rejected by the Constitutional Council and the law overturned; but evaluating security conditions and determining the level of imminent danger faced by citizens, theoretically and by discretion, falls on the executive branch that the Constitutional Council has no powers over.