BEIRUT —
Lebanon’s parliament failed Monday for a fourth time to elect a successor to
President Michel Aoun, with lawmakers divided over a candidate opposed by the
powerful Hezbollah movement.
اضافة اعلان
Already governed by a caretaker cabinet,
crisis-hit Lebanon is hurtling towards an imminent power vacuum, with just days
before the current president’s term finishes at the end of the month.
Parliament speaker Nabih Berri called for
another vote on Thursday in the hope of overcoming long-running arguments.
A total of 50 lawmakers in Lebanon’s 128-seat
parliament left their votes blank, many from the Iran-backed
Hezbollah and its
allies.
Their rivals mostly backed lawmaker Michel
Moawad, whose father Rene Moawad was a former president.
He has emerged as a frontrunner since
parliament first met to name a president last month.
But Moawad, who won 39 votes on Monday, was
still far short the 86 ballots needed — two-thirds of seats — to win.
University professor and activist Issam
Khalife took 10 votes, cast by independent lawmakers who emerged from a mass
2019 anti-government protest movement, as well as others.
But the required quorum was lost before a
second round could be held, after some lawmakers walked out — a recurring
scenario in past votes.
Moawad’s supporters accused Hezbollah and its
allies of obstructing a second round of voting to negotiate with other blocs,
effectively preventing the election.
“No bloc in parliament can impose a
president, not Hezbollah nor anyone else,” said Elias Hankash, a lawmaker from
the Kataeb Party (also known as the phalangist party) that supports Moawad.
Hankash accused lawmakers who left parliament
of “systematic disruption”, because there were not enough lawmakers to make a
vote legitimate.
Under Lebanon’s longstanding confessional
power-sharing system, the presidency is reserved for a
Maronite Christian.
Aoun was elected in 2016 after a more than
two-year vacancy at the presidential palace, as lawmakers made 45 failed
attempts to name a candidate.
Since late 2019, Lebanon has been crippled by
an economic crisis, dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in recent
history.
Economic meltdown has pushed most Lebanese
into poverty.
Talks with the
International Monetary Fund to
unlock billions of dollars in loans have stalled, as Lebanese leaders have been
unable to enact substantial reforms demanded by the lender and donor countries.
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