Caregivers work with patients in the emergency triage room of the Hôtel Dieu de France hospital. (Credit: Marie Jo Sader/L'Orient-Le Jour)
BEIRUT — Elections will be held Sunday at the Order of Physicians in Beirut for the renewal of the 16 members of the office of the order and the election of a new president, after the end of the three-year mandate of the current president, Charaf Abou Charaf.
Three lists will compete in the elections. These lists are led by: Bernard Gerbaka, a pediatrician from the Saint Joseph University of Beirut and Hotel Dieu de France (a candidacy supported by the Kataeb party, of which Gerbaka is a member), Joseph Bakhache, a plastic surgeon from the American University of Beirut (implicitly supported by the Free Patriotic Movement and its allies) and Georges Habre, an orthopedic surgeon who claims to be part of the new opposition, and who practices mainly in the Mount Lebanon and Sainte Thérèse hospitals.
Of the approximately 16,000 registered doctors in Lebanon, 9,300 are eligible to vote, having paid their syndicate dues. However, since 3,000 doctors are currently outside Lebanon, the electorate comprises around 6,300 voters.
“I don’t know if the Future Movement will abstain or if, on the contrary, it will recommend participation,” Abu Charaf said during an interview the eve of the election. The outgoing president of the order also said that the Amal Movements’s and Hezbollah’s preferences in the elections “are still not clear.”
The electoral method consists of two rounds, the first for the election of members, the second for the election of the president. In addition to the 16 candidates for the council of the order, each list includes a maximum of 10 additional candidates for the organization’s administrative positions (disciplinary council, pensions, mutual insurance, etc.).
Interviewed by L'Orient-Le Jour, the three candidates assured that they have at heart the independence of the medical association and the well understood interest of the practitioners, who suffer in the same way as their fellow citizens from the deterioration of the economic and financial situation, in particular from the confiscation of their funds and savings by the banks. They also called on their colleagues to participate in the vote.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
