None of the camps in the Parliament have a clear majority which would elect the successor of Michel Aoun.
Le Monde with AFP
Lebanon is heading towards a political vacuum for lack of candidate capable of collecting the majority of votes in Parliament to elect a successor to the president, Michel Aoun, whose mandate expires in a week. In their fourth attempt, the Lebanese deputies did not succeed, Monday, October 24, in identifying any majority, the Parliament being clearly divided into two camps, that of Hezbollah, pro-Iranian, and that of its opponents.
The deputy Michel Moawad, who tries to bring the voices of the opposite camp to Hezbollah, obtained 39 votes on Monday, far from the 86 votes necessary to be elected in the first round. The son of former president René Moawad, murdered in 1989, obtained three votes less than during the last session last Thursday. In addition, 50 deputies voted white, including parliamentarians from the pro-Hezbollah camp.
A respected activist and professor, Issam Khalifé, obtained 10 votes, including those of deputies from the protest movement launched in October 2019 to claim the departure of a political class in place for decades, accused of corruption and incompetence. Like several times in the past in Lebanon, the process of election of a new president could take months; The country is undermined by political differences which also prevent the formation of a government.
“No block in Parliament can impose a president”
The election of Michel Aoun took place in 2016, after a vacancy of twenty-nine months at the top of the State, and dozens of voting sessions in Parliament to try to reach a consensus on a candidate. Under the denominational system for sharing the power in force, the Presidency of the Republic is reserved for a Maronite Christian, but the prerogatives of the Head of State have been greatly reduced since the end of the civil war (1975-1990).
“No block in Parliament can impose a president, neither Hezbollah nor anyone else,” said Elias Hankache, deputy of the Christian Party Kataëb who supports Mr. Moawad. He deplored a “systematic blockage” on the part of the Hezbollah, Shiite camp, which demonstrated his hostility to the candidacy of Mr. Moawad.
Lebanon has known since 2019 one of the worst economic crises in the world since 1850 according to the World Bank, marked by a vertiginous pricing, a historic tumble of the national currency, an unprecedented impoverishment of the population and serious shortages .