Elias Sarkis

Elias Sarkis ( Arabic إلياس سركيس Ilyās Sarkīs ; * July 20, 1924 in Shabbaniah ; † June 27, 1985 ) was President of Lebanon from 1976 to 1982.

Life

The Maronite Christian was born the son of a gendarmerie in Schabbaniah and graduated from the Jesuit-run Université Saint-Joseph of Beirut in 1948 with a degree in law . He joined the legal corps in 1953 and was appointed legal director of the presidential office in Baabda during the government of President Fuad Schihab , which implemented the reform and compensation policy of Schihabism . In 1962 he became Director General for Presidential Affairs, that is, Director of the Presidential Office. After the banking crisis of 1968, Sarkis was appointed governor of the central bank , the Banque du Liban .

Sarkis ran for president in 1970 as Schihab's protégé and his victory was expected, but due to a change of opinion among several members of the National Assembly led by Kamal Jumblat (Joumblatt), the Druze leader of the Socialist Progressive Party, he was won by Suleiman Frangieh with one vote Beat the lead. However, Sarkis was elected president on May 8, 1976, when the Lebanese civil war was raging. Since the armed forces of Syria, at the request of Frangieh and with a mandate from the Arab League, occupied two-thirds of the country and most of the rest was controlled by militias , his power was very limited. Just before the end of its presidency in 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon and advanced to the outskirts of Beirut under the command of Ariel Sharon .

Sarkis was replaced by the militia leader Bachir Gemayel of the right-wing Christian Falange Party (Kataeb), who was elected by a rump parliament under Israeli supervision on August 21, 1982 , who was assassinated on the Beirut Falange headquarters nine days before he was due to take office. His older brother Amine Gemayel was subsequently elected president, and Sarkis handed over the office on September 23, 1982.

Sarkis died in Switzerland in 1985 at the age of 61. He wasn't married.

literature

• Elias Sarkis , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 36/1985 of August 26, 1985, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)