Élias Hrawi

Élias Hrawi

Élias Hrawi , also Elias Hraoui ( Arabic الياس الهراوي Ilyās al-Harāwī ; * September 4, 1926 in Zahlé ; † July 7, 2006 in Beirut ) was President of Lebanon from 1989 to 1998. He was the first president not from the heartland of the Maronites in the Governorate Lebanon mountain came. He was elected on November 24, 1989, two days after the assassination attempt on René Moawad , who had only been in office for 17 days. Expired when his tenure in 1995 that changed the National Assembly , the Lebanese constitution to allow Hrawi to remain in office for another three years.

Life

Hrawi was born in Hawch al-Umara near Zahlé in the Bekaa Plain into a Maronite family who owned land. He graduated from the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut . He founded a fruit export company and mainly traded with Swiss business partners. When his export business was destroyed by the Lebanese civil war , which raged from 1975 to 1990, he switched to importing oil.

As the head of a well-known family of politicians, Hrawi succeeded his brothers George and Joseph when he was elected to the National Assembly in 1972. From 1980 to 1982 he was Minister of Public Works under President Elias Sarkis and Prime Minister Shafik Wazzan . He focused on building bridges and highways to connect all regions of the country.

During his presidency, the constitutional amendments following the Taif Agreement fell , which gave the Muslims more power and influence than before. On October 13, 1990, with the support of the Syrian Army, he forced General Michel Aoun , who led a rival government, to resign in order to begin the reconstruction of Lebanon. On May 22, 1991, he signed a treaty with Syria in which Lebanon promised that it would not allow the use of its territory against Syrian interests.

The Lebanese are divided on Hrawi. Some admire his determination to disband the militia and end the civil war that had torn the country for 15 years. He was respected for his long-standing conviction that loyalty to the nation should take precedence over sectarian interests and for promoting peaceful coexistence between the religious groups in Lebanon. Others have accused him of inconsistency, however, as he disbanded all Christian and most Muslim militias, but not Hezbollah , a fundamentalist Shiite militia. His critics also point out that he was a strong advocate of Syrian interests and that the cooperation treaty turned Lebanon into a Syrian colony. He was also criticized for the constitutional amendment that extended his term of office by three years; Former President Amine Gemayel is currently saying that such things undermine the delicate constitutional fabric of the nation, and later others have accused him of setting the precedent for his successor, Émile Lahoud , to similarly increase his term of office by three years at Syria's request extended.

Hrawi was married to Mona Jammal and had three sons (George, Roy and Roland) and two daughters (Rina and Zalfa). He died in hospital the American University of Beirut (AUB) to cancer .

Web links

• Elias Hrawi in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Elias Hrawi biography (contient de nombreuses inexactitudes)
• Elias Hrawi biography on MEDEA.be (précis; les informations proviennent de l'ambassade libanaise à Washington, DC)

predecessor	Office	successor
René Moawad	President of the Lebanese Republic 1989–1998	Émile Lahoud