Today, Thursday, the Lebanese parliament failed, for the eighth time, to elect a president of the republic, despite the post being vacant for a month, due to deep political divisions in the midst of An accelerating economic collapse that the authorities are unable to contain.
52 deputies voted with a white paper, while Representative Michel Moawad, who is supported by the Lebanese Forces led by Samir Geagea and other blocs, including the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s bloc, got 37 votes.
Major blocs, including Hezbollah, oppose Moawad, who is known for his closeness to the Americans, and describe him as a “challenging” candidate, calling for agreement in advance on a candidate before going to Parliament to elect him.
Michel Moawad
At the outset of the session, the representative of the Lebanese Forces Party, Antoine Habshi, criticized the repetition of the same scenario in every election session, which “puts the House of Representatives out of its role.”
Habshi called on Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to “invite the heads of blocs and representatives to exercise their duties and to remain inside parliament to implement the constitution.”
The system of settlements and quotas between political and sectarian forces usually delays important decisions, including the formation of the government or the election of a president.
The Speaker of Parliament set a date for a new session to elect a President of the Republic next Thursday.
In the first round of voting, a candidate needs a two-thirds majority, or 86 votes, to win. The required majority, if a second session takes place, becomes 65 votes out of 128, which is the number of members of Parliament.
Like every week, the first session was held with the presence of a majority of two-thirds, before deputies withdrew to overthrow the quorum in the second session, which is a tactic followed by Hezbollah and its allies.
No political party has a parliamentary majority to impose its candidate.
and the arrow Parliament failed to elect a president hT now, that the electoral process may take a long time, in a country where constitutional deadlines are rarely respected.
The presidential vacuum coincides with the existence of a caretaker government that is unable to take necessary decisions, and at a time when Lebanon has witnessed since 2019 An economic downturn The World Bank is among the worst in the world since 1850.
The World Bank suggested that “the unprecedented political vacuum will further delay reaching any agreement on resolving the crisis and approving the necessary reforms, which deepens the plight of the Lebanese people.”
In a report he published last week, he warned that “the contraction in the real GDP that Lebanon has witnessed since 2018, amounting to 37.3 percent, which is among the worst rates of deflation the world has witnessed, has wiped out the economic growth achieved over 15 years. It undermines the economy’s ability to recover.”