March 8 MPs to Attend May 22 Session amid Continued Deadlock

March 8 alliance lawmakers have promised to attend a fourth round of presidential elections set to take place next Thursday although they haven't specified if they would vote or not, Speaker Nabih Berri announced.

Berri told his visitors on Thursday that the lawmakers, who have so far boycotted the parliamentary sessions aimed at electing a president, will attend the fourth round.

However, they did not inform him whether they would cast blank votes or abstain from voting, he said.

Fifty-two MPs from the March 8 camp cast blank votes in the first round of the polls, while Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea received the votes of only 48 MPs and 16 lawmakers voted for Aley lawmaker Henri Helou.

The March 8 MPs later pulled out of the session and continued to boycott the other rounds, the fourth of which was held on Thursday, over claims that an agreement should be reached among the rival factions on a consensus president.

Berri adjourned Thursday’s session until May 22 after only 73 lawmakers showed up, resulting in a lack of the needed two-thirds quorum of the 128-member parliament.

The legislature’s continued failure to elect a successor to President Michel Suleiman has raised concerns over vacuum in the country's top Christian post after the expiry of his six-year term on May 25.

Under the Pact of 1943, the presidency is reserved for Maronite Christians. The prime minister should be a Sunni and the speaker a Shiite.

But several newspapers quoted Berri as saying that he would continue to call for consecutive sessions if a new president was not elected by that date.

He expressed his “total rejection to the paralysis of the legislative institution.”

“Are the Sunnis, Shiites or Druze causing a lack of quorum in parliament?” Berri asked.

“Or are the Christian MPs not attending” the sessions? he wondered in reference to the lawmakers of Change and Reform bloc leader MP Michel Aoun, who is a member of the March 8 alliance.

Berri stressed that the country's other factions would not reject a candidate if the Christian parties reached consensus on the new head of state.

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