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For the eighth time… The Lebanese parliament fails to elect a president

Today, Thursday, the Lebanese parliament failed, for the eighth time, to elect a president of the republic, despite the position having been vacant for a month, due to deep political divisions amidst An accelerating economic collapse that the authorities are unable to contain.

52 MPs voted with a white paper, while MP Michel Moawad, backed by the Lebanese Forces led by Samir Geagea and other blocs, including Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s bloc, got 37 votes.

The major blocs, including Hezbollah, oppose Moawad, known for his closeness to the Americans, and describe him as a “challenging” candidate, asking for an advance agreement on a candidate before going to Parliament to elect him.

Michel Moawad

At the beginning of the session, the representative of the Lebanese Forces Party, Antoine Habshi, criticized the repetition of the same scenario in each electoral round, which “puts the House of Representatives out of its role”.

Habshi called on the speaker of parliament Nabih Berri to “call on the bloc leaders and representatives to exercise their duties and remain within the parliament to implement the constitution”.

The system of agreements and quotas between political and sectarian forces usually delays important decisions, including the formation of a government or the election of a president.

The Speaker of Parliament has 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, in the event of a second session, becomes 65 votes out of 128, which is the number of members of Parliament.

As every week, the first session was held with a two-thirds majority before MPs withdrew to overturn the quorum in the second session, 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 can take a long time, in a country where constitutional terms are rarely respected.

The presidential vacuum coincides with the existence of an interim government which is unable to take the necessary decisions, and at a time when Lebanon has witnessed it since 2019 An economic downturn The World Bank is among the worst in the world since 1850.

The World Bank has suggested that “the unprecedented political vacuum will further delay reaching any agreement on resolving the crisis and approving the necessary reforms, which exacerbates the plight of the Lebanese people.”

In a report he released last week, he warned that “the contraction in 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 , wiped out the economic growth achieved over 15 years. It undermines the economy’s resilience.”

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