Camille Chamoun

Camille Nimr Chamoun was born in Deir el Qamar in Mount Lebanon and earned a law degree from the Saint Joseph University in Beirut. Elected to parliament in 1934, he was a key figure in the 1943 independence movement, imprisoned alongside Riad Al Solh in Rashaya Castle by French Mandate authorities.

Elected president in 1952, Chamoun presided over Lebanon's meteoric rise as the financial and tourism hub of the Middle East—often dubbed the 'Switzerland of the East'—founding the Baalbeck International Festival in 1956. A charismatic, staunchly pro-Western leader, he founded the National Liberal Party (Ahrar) and remained a dominant political titan until his death at eighty-seven.