President Rene Moawad

On November 5, 1989, following the conclusion of the Taif agreement, veteran politician Rene Moawad was elected president of Lebanon at the Qoleiat air base in North Lebanon . Seventeen days later, he was assassinated few meters away from the Cabinet House by a bomb that exploded as his motorcade was returning from the Lebanese independence day celebrations on November 22, 1989.

About 250kg of remote controlled explosives destroyed the President's Mercedes in the heart of Syrian held west Beirut. The enormous amount of explosives used, were placed over a period of some days, inside a sweet shop on the road along which the car would pass. The explosives were detonated as the car passed the shop and it has been suggested that the device used also triggered a secondary bomb hidden inside the car. The occupants were vaporized, the rear section of the vehicle was tossed onto the roof of a local building with the front half being thrown 160 meters away into a parking lot. No investigation was carried out into the murder.

Renown for his moderation, President Moawad was chosen for the task as Lebanon was about to split in two halves when, following  the expiration of President Amine Gemayel's term, the post of president remained vacant for 409 days. At that time, two failed attempts were made to elect a president as the forces in the Christian arena preferred to plunge in chaos rather than elect Syrian-favored Michael Daher as president. Adding to the confusion, General Michel Aoun, then president of the military government, rejected the election of Moawad in the course of his non-relenting rejection of the Taif Agreement.

Throughout his career as a politician, Moawad succeeded  in crossing explosive political roads without exploding them, or get exploded by them. He safeguarded the critical balance in Zgharta, his home town, through an equally critical alliance with Suleiman Franjieh, a Zgharta leader and former president of Lebanon, thus saving the region from plunging into domestic war. Yet his wisdom, which blocked all doors to strife, almost backfired at him when he elected Bashir Gemayel as president amid the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 1982. The Franjieh family contained their anger, without divulging it.

Moawad started his political life in 1951 when he ran for Parliament alongside Hameed Franjieh in Zgharta and lost the election. He then became a stunt opponent of then President Bechara Khouri - an opposition that eventually lead to his detention in Aley.

His moderation did not prevent him from opposing President Bechara Khouri, neither did it prevent him from opposing President Camille Chamoun during the last phase of the latter's term in office. But when the pressure increased, he moved on to Latakia, Syria, with his ally Suleiman Franjieh, and from there he ran for Parliament in the 1957 election, and won. Since then, the Zgharta alliance remained intact, and Moawad kept his seat in the Parliament until he was assassinated in 1989.

A Chehabist in depth (a doctrine adopted by President Fouad Chehab and his supporters during and after his term in office), Moawad participated in two of Rashid Karami's cabinets (also a Chehabist), and was appointed minister of PTT in Karami's cabinet of October 31, 1961 to February 20, 1964, minister of Public Works in Karami's cabinet of January 16, 1969 to November 24, 1969, and Minister of National Education and Fine Arts in Chafic Wazzan's cabinet of October 25, 1980 to September 24, 1982.

Ever since he entered the Parliament in 1957, he remained a deputy without interruption in the successive parliaments of June 30 1957 to May 4, 1960; July 18, 1960 to February 19, 1964; May 8, 1964 to April 7, 1968; April 7, 1968 to May 7, 1972; and May 1972 to June 1991, where, due to the civil war, the Parliament's term was self-extended in 1976, 1982 and 1986.

One of President Moawad's few paradoxes was that he was among a few who violated the Zgharta principle of historic animosity to Becharri by marrying Nayla Issa El Khouri, daughter of one of Becherri's leaders, who, after working as a journalist in L'Orient Le Jour, and after the assassination of her husband, entered the Parliament in 1991 and remained there eversince.