Introduction to the evening news 1-04-2012

Two key events marked the day: the “Friends of Syria” meeting and the Muslim Brotherhood’s naming of its presidential candidate.     

The Friends of Syria meeting neither carried surprises nor determined steps. It settled for recognizing the National Syrian Council as a legitimate representative of all Syrians but failed to determine concrete steps except for announcing that the third meeting for the Friends of Syria will take place in Paris without setting a date.    

An atmosphere of indecisiveness towards the Syrian regime prevailed over the meeting given that French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe spoke about “the risk of procrastination”, highlighting the importance of setting a deadline for the timing of the implementation of Annan’s plan which the Syrian regime has reportedly approved on March 27. However, the approval has not been yet translated into action.    

The second event was the Muslim Brotherhood’s nomination of its deputy leader Khayrat el-Shater as candidate for president, a move that sparked division within the group given that 56 members of the Guidance Bureau were in favor of the candidate and 52 members were against him.    

El-Shater is facing the obstacle of general amnesty given the series of military charges he has under his belt. However, some analysts considered that el-Shater will be a consensual president that the main ruling entities, the military council and the Muslim Brotherhood, would agree to support.   

As for the Lebanese files, they have seen no developments as the holiday season is nearing. 

However few developments to mention are the follow- up on the Syrian file and the resumption of negotiations to reduce the costs of the power-generating ships at a time when mystery is surrounding power plants after the frenzy sparked by a letter received by the Serail from the General Electric Company.   

The new yet seen before issue that made it again to the forefront is the issue of electoral law. What will come after the fall of the proportional representation draft law?