Lebanese MPs failed for the fourth time on Monday (October 24th) to elect a successor to President Michel Aoun, whose term expires in a week, with Parliament clearly divided into two camps, that of pro-Iranian Hezbollah and that of its opponents.
Lebanon is heading towards a political vacuum, for lack of a candidate capable of winning the majority of votes in Parliament, where no camp has a clear majority.
Political differences
Deputy Michel Moawad, who is trying to bring together the votes of the camp opposed to Hezbollah, obtained 39 votes on Monday, far from the 86 votes needed to be elected in the first round. The son of former president René Moawad, assassinated in 1989, obtained three votes less than during the last session last Thursday. Fifty deputies voted blank, including parliamentarians from the pro-Hezbollah camp.
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A respected activist and university professor, Issam Khalifé, obtained ten votes, in particular those of deputies from the protest movement launched in October 2019 to demand the departure of a political class in place for decades, accused of corruption and corruption. ‘incompetence. As several times in the past in Lebanon, the process of electing a new president could take months in a country plagued by political differences that also prevent the formation of a government.
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“Systemic blockage”
Michel Aoun’s election took place in 2016 after a 29-month vacancy 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 of power sharing 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 bloc in parliament can impose a president, neither Hezbollah nor anyone else“, declared to AFP Elias Hankache, deputy of the Christian party Kataeb which supports René Moawad. He lamented asystematic blockingfrom the Shiite Hezbollah camp, which expressed its hostility to René Moawad’s candidacy.
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Lebanon has been experiencing since 2019 one of the worst economic crises in the world since 1850 according to the World Bank, marked by a vertiginous rise in prices, a historic plummeting of the national currency, an unprecedented impoverishment of the population and serious shortages.