INSTITUTIONAL BLOCK | Lebanon fails in its 12th attempt to elect president in eight months

2023-06-14 14:11:57

He Lebanon he fails on his twelfth attempt to break out of his political blockade. This Wednesday the Lebanese Parliament held its 12th parliamentary session to choose its president. the country leads eight months without a head of state but, at the same time, the executive power vacuum is dual for the first time in the history of Lebanon, since the cabinet of Prime Minister Najib Mikati acts in an interim capacity after assuming that status after the legislative elections more than a year ago. anus. According to the Constitution, the office of president must be held by a Maronite Christian. Jihad Azour, a former finance minister, and Suleiman Frangieh, the leader of the Hezbollah-backed Marada Movement, were the leading candidates this time.

This is the first such vote since January. And it ended like the previous ones. Of the 127 votes, 59 have been for Azour, also a former director of the office of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the Middle East and Central Asia, and 51 for Frangieh, a parliamentarian since 1991. To be elected, a candidate must get 86 votes in the first round, or 65 in the second. The problem has been that many parliamentarians have left Parliament after voting for the first time, so it has not been possible to hold the second round, since there were not 86 deputies present, or two thirds of the total, to carry it out. This situation of loss of quorum already occurred in the 11 previous sessions to prevent the second round from happening.

sitting in parliament

The vast majority of the deputies who have left the chamber have been, once again, the legislators of Hezbollah, the armed Shiite group backed by Iranand its allies, such as the Shi’ite Amal party, whose leader, Nabih Berri, has been president of Parliament since 1992. This strategy has once again deepened the tremendous crisis in which Lebanon has been involved for three years. In this way, sectarian tensions in the sensitive political system of the country of cedars are exacerbated and hopes of reviving the state in ruins fall at the same speed as its currency depreciates. Hezbollah claims to be exercising his constitutional rights by supporting his Christian ally Frangieh. This grandson of the former president of Lebanon is a friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who strongly supports Hezbollah’s right to arms.

After the last unsuccessful session to elect a president, two deputies that emerged from the protest movement of October 2019 decided to occupy Parliament to put pressure on their colleagues. “We are here to encourage the other 128 legislators to think about why they have been elected,” said Najat Saliba, deputy for the change. “In the midst of the complete vacuum of the executive and legislative bodies of the country, there is a need to restore these institutions immediatelyespecially because we are witnessing a great collapse of the economy and our people are experiencing a humanitarian crisis,” he told this newspaper. “There is an urgency, rather I would say that there is an emergency in the country,” he added.

“In the past, people relied on international support to influence the opinion of parliamentarians one way or another, but now nobody is really interested in Lebanon anymore, and foreign powers don’t have the time or energy to push for reform,” Saliba told El Periódico, from the Prensa Ibérica group. For this reason, together with other deputies for the change, this also a Lebanese scientist decided to give her support to Azour, 57. The former finance minister is known for his financial experience, his moderate behavior and his non-affiliation with any of Lebanon’s major political parties. As a consensus candidate for rival Christian parties and the independent opposition in parliament, he has been unable to overcome the broad influence of Hezbollah and thus Syria and Iran in Lebanese politics.