Lebanon is preparing to say goodbye to President Michel Aoun, whose term is coming to an end, with no prospect of a successor being elected.
Aoun’s term of office expires on October 31, and the Lebanese parliament failed to elect a new president for 3 meetings held for this purpose, the last of which took place last Thursday.
Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri has called for a new session to elect a president tomorrow, Monday, amid expectations that it will not come to fruition due to divisions between blocs and political parties in the country.
Lebanon has been in a political crisis since May last year that prevented Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati from forming his government, in parallel with a severe economic crisis hitting the country and affecting the price of the local currency, as well as the prices of all products, including energy prices and Food.
If the last week of Aoun ends without a president being elected, Lebanon will enter the dark tunnel of the presidential vacancy, in which it previously remained for two years before the election of the incumbent in 2016.
The era of crises
Lebanese view Aoun’s presidency as an era that saw the worst crises in Lebanon since the civil war, especially the bombing of the port of Beirut and its aftermath, in addition to other crises.
Aoun’s last week at Baabda Palace could see the signing of a historic agreement between Lebanon and Israel to demarcate common maritime boundaries, an agreement brokered by the United States.
The date for the signing of the agreement, which will take place in Naqoura in southern Lebanon, has not been set due to the postponement of the visit of the American mediator on the demarcation case, Amos Hochstein, to Lebanon from Tuesday to next Wednesday. , and further amendments to the texts of the document, which Hochstein will pass on to Lebanese and Israeli officials.
Aoun was not satisfied with the border agreement with Israel, but went to Syria, Lebanon’s northern neighbor, where he discussed the same move in a telephone conversation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and agreed to hold direct talks between Lebanese officials. Foreign Ministries of the two countries to resolve outstanding issues in this file.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun
According to Lebanese media, Aoun wants to score a historic point for himself before leaving office amid the many setbacks he has caused.
Fears of a presidential vacancy
The most important thing in the last week of Aoun’s term remains the election of a new president, so that the country does not fall into a dark tunnel, similar to what happened before his election in 2016, when the Lebanese parliament held 45 inconclusive sessions.
The winning candidate must be a Maronite Christian (the largest Christian denomination in Lebanon) and must receive two-thirds of the parliamentarians’ votes (86 out of 128 deputies).
The Lebanese Parliament includes 34 representatives of the Maronite community, distributed over 4 parliamentary blocks, in addition to a number of independent ones.
Hezbollah supports Gebran Bassil and Suleiman Frangieh and is trying to convince each of them to drop the other, but so far without success.
For his part, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri vowed that he “will not sit idly by” and will seek to resolve the issue of electing a president to replace Aoun amid her repeated stumbles.
Berry confirmed in press statements that he would call for an open dialogue to pave the way for a presidential election and reduce the presidential vacancy.
He indicated that he “does not interfere in the formation of the government, but is closely following the results of consultations on this issue so far.”
Who controls the election of a new president?
According to Lebanese media reports, 3 main forces can be traced in the dossier on the Lebanese presidential elections. The first is a sovereign opposition team that wants a presidential election and accepts MP Michel Moawad, the son of former President René Moawad, who was assassinated in 1989. He is a politician and current member of the Lebanese Parliament, the founder of the Lebanese Parliament. Political Independence Movement and its leader and former member of the leadership of the 14 March Force.
The second group has not nominated a single candidate and goes to the polls with a white paper, and its goal is to empty the government and the presidency, which would allow it to extract more benefits. As for the third group, it includes 13 MPs for change, according to analysts, demonstrated a lack of political experience, which analysts say has scattered their efforts.
Does the government resign?
In the context of an unstable political situation, the office of Lebanese President Michel Aoun denied an absolutely false publication about the intention of the President of the Republic to issue a decree accepting the resignation of the government.
The Lebanese Presidency confirmed that “this information falls within the scope of deliberate obfuscation and systematic abuse of the position of the presidium and the personality of the president.”
