On Tuesday, the Lebanese parliament elected Nabih Berri as its speaker for the seventh consecutive time in the first session of the new parliament, which, following recent parliamentary elections, includes heterogeneous blocs, none of which has an absolute majority.
The election of 84-year-old Berry, the longest-lived speaker of parliament in the Arab world and the world’s most likely, comes after a series of crises in Lebanon in recent years, including an accelerating economic collapse, unprecedented popular protests against the government, and a catastrophic explosion in the port of Beirut.
The recent parliamentary elections held on May 15 allowed at least 13 independent MPs to enter parliament, including doctors, lawyers, engineers and university professors, who pulled out of the October 17, 2019 demonstrations demanding the overthrow of the entire traditional political class. Despite this, Berry, a staunch ally of Hezbollah, managed to garner enough votes to remain at the helm of parliament.
Berry received 65 votes out of 128 MPs against 23 blanks and 40 blanks. He was the only candidate for the presidency of the parliament who belongs to the Shia sect in Lebanon, since Hezbollah and the Amal movement, led by Berri, won a total of 27 Shiite parliamentary seats in parliament.
A state of pandemonium prevailed at the beginning of the vote count after Berry failed to read the ballots, which included several invalid phrases. A number of MPs, including independents, objected to this prior to Berry’s return and agreed to read it publicly. Some of them stated: “Justice for the victims of the port explosion”, referring to the obstruction of the investigation into the explosion in the port that occurred on August 4, 2020, and “Justice for the depositors”, referring to the financial collapse and the detention of Lebanese deposits in banks, and Lukman Selim. Hezbollah opposition activist, who was killed, and the perpetrators of the crime have not yet been identified, and the “Strong Republic”.
In a symbolic move leading up to the session, the independents joined the families of the victims of the Beirut port bombing, which killed more than 200 people, in a march to the sound of the chants of “revolution, revolution” that started from the port, passing through Martyrs’ Square, which was the cradle of the demonstrations 2019, to the headquarters of the Parliament in the center of Beirut.
In a speech following his election, Berry affirmed his respect for the election results. He said: “I will follow every opinion or constructive criticism and I will drop every insult behind me and we will meet a white book with a white heart and sincere intentions and a hand extended to everyone with sincere cooperation to save Lebanon.”
He called on 128 deputies to jointly “achieve constitutional benefits on time” and prevent “a vacuum in any government.”
