Twelve members of the Tripoli municipal council resign

12 of the 24 newly-elected members of the Tripoli municipal council submitted their resignations Tuesday to the acting governor of North Lebanon, Iman el-Rafih. Eleven of them are from the 'Fabric of Tripoli' list supported by civil society, and another is from the 'Jaras el Madina' (Guardians of the City) list, which holds only one seat on the council, reported L'Orient Today's regional correspondent, Michel Hallak.

The resigning members have not yet released an official statement, possibly to allow time to resolve the disagreements between them and the current council president, Abdel Hamid Karameh, who had just taken office Tuesday morning at the Tripoli municipality. The latter is from the 'Vision of Tripoli' list, a coalition among several Sunni political figures from the northern capital (Faisal Karami, Achraf Rifi, and Mohammad Kabbara).

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The Tripoli municipal council has 24 members. They were elected during the May 11 elections after more than three years of postponing municipal elections in Lebanon.

Municipality president calls for dialogue

Karameh and the remaining council members also met with the resigning members at the city’s Serail, in the presence of the regional governor, to hear their demands.

"We discussed the disagreement with the governor. But an agreement can only be reached at the municipal palace," the president of the Tripoli municipal council told the press after the meeting, inviting the resigning members "to discuss within the framework of the municipal council." However, he did not reveal the reason for the discord and the resignation of the 12 members.

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At the end of the municipal elections, Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar noted "some irregularities" during the vote counting process in Tripoli but dismissed suspicions of fraud. He said that only the Cabinet could decide to conduct a new election once the results are officially published. He was reacting to the request of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (LADE) "to annul the elections in Tripoli due to serious irregularities reported during the counting."

Three days after the vote, the Cabinet meeting in Baabda, decided to place the governor of North Lebanon, Ramzi Nohra, at the disposal of the Interior Ministry.

Former Prime Minister Nagib Mikati, who is from Tripoli, called to "keep politics out of the Tripoli municipal council issue," urging "all parties involved to cooperate." He also expressed hope that "all members make the right decision in the best interest of the city."