Hussein Dakroub
BEIRUT: Parliament Tuesday failed to elect a new president over a lack of quorum, prompting Speaker Nabih Berri to postpone the session to Oct. 9.
Tuesday’s was the 12th session that was thwarted by a lack of quorum in the past five months to pick a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure ended May 25.
Berri said that the main obstacle preventing the election of a new president was “made in Lebanon.”
“I am afraid that resolving this obstacle currently requires external intervention unfortunately,” the speaker told his visitors
While Berri expressed comfort with the revival of Saudi-Iranian contacts, he maintained that their impact on the situation in Lebanon was “unlikely to materialize soon” due to the fact that there was a set of “hot topics” that preceded the Lebanese file.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud al-Faysal, and Iran, Jawad Zarif, met in New York Sunday on the sidelines of the 69th U.N. General Assembly. The talks between the two regional powers raised hopes that thorny issues in the Middle East were on their way to being resolved.
The repeated failure to elect a president coincided with serious moves by rival blocs to convene Parliament in a legislative session next week to endorse urgent draft laws, including the public sector’s long-awaited salary scale bill.
Berri reiterated that the issues of the legislative session and the expected extension of Parliament’s term were two separate issues that were not governed by any deals. He added that the holding of a legislative session does not call off the need to hold a session to elect a new head a state.
“But there are no positive signs in that direction,” Berri said.
Only 58 lawmakers, mainly from the March 14 coalition, Berri’s bloc and MP Walid Jumblatt’s bloc, of the 128-member Parliament showed up at Tuesday’s election session, well below the two-thirds (86) majority required to convene the session.
Lawmakers from MP Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform parliamentary bloc, Hezbollah’s bloc and its March 8 allies have foiled a quorum since April by consistently boycotting Parliament sessions, demanding an agreement beforehand with their March 14 rivals over a consensus candidate.
Aoun is viewed as the March 8 alliance’s undeclared presidential candidate in the face of the March 14 coalition-backed candidate, Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea.
The Future parliamentary bloc restated its stance that priority should be given to the election of a president.
“This [presidential] election will set in motion other constitutional events, at the forefront of which is holding parliamentary elections after conducting the presidential vote,” the bloc said after its weekly meeting.
It said that the March 14 initiative to break the four-month-long presidential stalemate constituted “a positive proposal” to settle this issue.
“The core of the initiative is based on opening the door of dialogue among all the Lebanese parties with a view to reaching a national compromise [over the presidential election],” the bloc said.
Geagea scoffed at the argument that political differences between the March 8 and March 14 parties were obstructing the election of a president. Instead, he blamed the boycott of the sessions by Aoun’s and Hezbollah’s blocs for the deadlock.
Speaking at a news conference at his residence in Maarab, north of Beirut, shortly after Tuesday’s session was postponed, Geagea said that the March 14 coalition launched an initiative earlier this month to resolve the presidential crisis, but it had been swiftly rejected by the March 8 parties.
The March 14 coalition offered to hold talks with the Hezbollah-led March 8 parties to reach agreement on a consensus candidate.
“The obstruction [of the presidential election] is a big crime against Lebanon, even though some may claim that the adoption of the obstruction principle is meant to elect a strong president,” Geagea said, taking an indirect swipe at Aoun. “But in practice, this boycott will lead to no president, or probably to the election of a weak president.”
LF MP George Adwan also slammed the March 8 parties for boycotting Tuesday’s session. He said action was required to hold the parliamentary elections scheduled Nov. 16. “Do the Lebanese know that if we do not hold a legislative session to amend two articles in the current 1960 electoral law, the challenge against the electoral law would become normal and easy?” Adwan told a news conference in Parliament.
Referring to the legislative session scheduled for next week, he said the wage hike bill would top the agenda.
In addition to the salary scale bill, other important items on the agenda include authorizing the issuance of eurobonds to raise money for public financing, the rent law and a new electoral law.
Although Christian MPs in both the March 8 and March 14 camps have opposed legislative sessions in the absence of a president, they said they were ready to attend sessions to address only important issues.
This stance was upheld by Aoun’s bloc during its weekly meeting chaired by Aoun Tuesday.
“Amid the talk about a legislative session, we remind that the bloc has demanded for months legislation on important matters,” MP Ibrahim Kanaan said after the meeting. “As we have previously demanded the need to put curbs on the Syrian refugee influx, we stress the need to deal with urgent and essential issues, including the armament of the Army, the salary scale and eurobonds.”
