That’s because the process that led to the agreement, namely the summoning of Lebanese parliamentarians to Taif, Saudi Arabia, to agree on a new political order for their country, did not anoint him president. The president lost his right to select prime ministers and form governments-the first task being transferred to parliament and the second to the prime minister.Īoun greatly resents Taif. The agreement mandated a change in Lebanon’s political system, in which executive authority was taken away from the Maronite president and vested in the council of ministers, led by a Sunni prime minister. Even as he has held Lebanon hostage to his personal ambitions and those of his son in law Gebran Bassil, he may also have caused a major transformation in the way his Maronite community perceives Taif.įor the past three decades many Maronites have regarded Taif as the death knell of their community’s power. The agent of change is President Michel Aoun. The recent formation of Lebanon’s government provoked a minor revolution in how the Taif agreement of 1989, which served as a basis for amending the Lebanese constitution in 1990, will be interpreted from now on.
