BEIRUT, May 31, 2022 (Xinhua) The new Lebanese parliament, in its first session on Tuesday, elected Nabih Berri, the leader of the Shiite Amal Movement, as its speaker for the seventh time in a row since 1992.
Berri won a session he chaired as the 84-year-old president, whose facts were reported on Lebanese TV screens, with a majority of 65 deputies, with 23 blank papers and 40 null papers out of the 128 deputies who make up the parliament.
With this result, Berri has obtained 33 votes less than the 98 votes he obtained in his election as Speaker of the previous parliament in 2018.
Berri won the votes of the deputies of the “Shiite duo” in Hezbollah (13 deputies and 3 allies), the “Amal” movement (15 deputies), the Druze “Progressive Socialist Party” bloc led by Walid Jumblatt (9 deputies) and independent representatives.
The Christian “Lebanese Forces Party” blocs (19 deputies), the Christian “Phalange Party” (5 deputies), and the Forces for Change (13 deputies) announced that Berri would not be elected.
In a speech broadcast on Lebanese TV screens after his election, Berri called on the new parliament to complete the constitutional requirements on time and reject the vacuum in any authority.
In his speech, Berri said that it is useful for all parliamentarians and blocs to realize “the magnitude of the challenges facing them at a time when they will not have the luxury of maneuvering, especially since the weapon of disruption available in their hands will only lead to a major crime against the nation, which is dying with the testimony of everyone.”
He explained that Parliament has the tasks of consolidating climates of civil peace and national unity and rejecting the division that reproduces climates of war between the Lebanese and distributes them on the axes of sectarian and sectarian division.
He called on Parliament to “respond to people’s concerns, pain, aspirations and hopes for the ability to save and change,” stressing the adoption of plans, promises and programs that provide solutions to the many different crises in Lebanon.
He urged members of Parliament to complete the constitutional entitlements on time and reject the vacuum in any authority, calling for the transition in Lebanon from the state of sects, sects and quotas to a state of citizenship, equality and equal opportunities, and a civil state.
The new parliament awaits the entitlements of forming parliamentary committees, in addition to launching the process of forming a new government capable of addressing the economic and financial crisis in the country, as well as electing a new president of the republic, as the term of current President Michel Aoun ends on October 31, 2022.
Berri stressed the parliament’s unity against any compromising Lebanon’s sovereign rights in its water and oil resources and not to compromise, bargain or normalize with Israel over these wealth, no matter what the pressures.
Parliament also elected Representative Elias Bou Saab, who belongs to the Christian “Free Patriotic Movement” bloc, which was founded by President Michel Aoun, and headed by his brother-in-law, Representative Gebran Bassil, as deputy speaker of parliament.
Bousaab won 64 votes, compared to 49 votes for MP Ghassan Skaf.
Parliament completed the election of its office by electing MPs Alain Aoun from the Free Patriotic Movement and MP Hadi Abul-Hassan from the Progressive Socialist Party for the Parliament’s secretariat.
Lebanon had turned the page on the parliamentary elections that took place on May 15, and resulted in a new parliamentary map of partisan and political forces in the absence of any significant majority for any party.