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Representatives of the “Strong Lebanon” bloc today filed an appeal with the Constitutional Council against Law No. 41 issued on 3/9/2026, relating to the exceptional extension of the mandate of the House of Representatives for a period of two years.
In this context, Representative Cesar Abi Khalil, a member of the “Strong Lebanon” bloc, explained after submitting the appeal before the Constitutional Council, “We support the principle of rejecting the extension and confiscating the popular agency, which we only obtain from the people and periodically through elections. The question here is: What are the reasons for the extension being based? And is the problem in the extension period or somewhere else?”
He pointed out that “Constitutional Council Resolution No. 724/2014 is clear in this context, as it indicates that exceptional circumstances may create exceptional legitimacy that enables the Parliament to temporarily deviate from some constitutional rules, but this exceptional legitimacy ends immediately after the end of the exceptional circumstances. The same resolution also confirms that it is not possible to go too far in the exceptional period, and it is not possible to go to unreasonable periods that violate the principle of reasonable periodicity of elections, so that the mandate of the Parliament is extended to approximately half an additional term. Therefore, this argument Returned.”
He stressed, “This discussion took place within the House of Representatives, and tomorrow, of course, the Constitutional Council will request the minutes of the sessions. We presented all possible solutions, and we drew attention more than once to the fact that it is not permissible to take shelter in exceptional circumstances to justify a long extension. The truth that happened, and people must hear it clearly, is that these exceptional circumstances came as a gift to some parties. There are those who were talking about extending the mandate of the House of Representatives even before the outbreak of war, because some of them lost popular agency and lost popular support, and they realize that they have He loses his position and his seat in the Parliament.”
He added, “Today, this exceptional circumstance has been exploited to impose a very long extension that is not commensurate with the nature of the exceptional circumstance we are going through. This is the truth, and if the discussion continues in the technical details and extension periods, the Constitutional Council has previously clearly said that it is not possible to go to such a long period, because that violates the principle of reasonable deadlines and moves to the scope of exaggerated deadlines.”
He concluded by saying, “What actually happened was that we took refuge in an exceptional circumstance to achieve a political goal, which is to preserve parliamentary seats outside the framework of the Popular Agency, which was supposed to be renewed in May 2026.”
To view the full text of the appeal Click here
