No President in Sight as Vacuum Enters 3rd Week
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
The presidential vacuum entered its third week on Monday as a large number of lawmakers failed to attend an electoral session, which met the fate of its predecessors over differences between the rival parties on a compromise candidate.
Speaker Nabih Berri adjourned the session to elect a new president to June 18 after MPs once again did not guarantee the needed two-thirds quorum.
The majority of the March 8 alliance's lawmakers have caused a lack of quorum in several rounds of elections over their call for an agreement on a compromise candidate.
Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, who considers himself such a candidate, has repeatedly refused to run for the presidency before clinching a deal with his rivals on his candidacy.
But the March 14 camp has kept its support for Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, another Maronite official running for the country's top Christian post.
“The Lebanese people should address the MPs, whom they elected and who are obstructing quorum, and question the motives of their actions,” Geagea said in a brief press conference he held at his residence in Maarab.
The Baabda Palace seat was left vacant on May 25 when President Michel Suleiman's six-year term expired.
Suleiman said on his twitter account that MPs should participate in the sessions to elect a new head of state.
“Let's keep foreign (countries) away from this event,” he said.
“It is not suitable for democratic Lebanon to dance in the weddings of friendly and neighboring elections,” Suleiman tweeted about the polls in Syria where President Bashar Assad was allegedly re-elected in a landslide.
Assad captured a third seven-year term in the middle of a bloody three-year-old uprising against his rule that has devastated the country.
G.K.
D.A.
09 June 2014, 09:02
12
Aoun is a compromise candidate like George W Bush is a liberal democrat.
09 June 2014, 09:46
42
Thank you kingdom of terrorism for depriving Lebanon of a President. If you're so concerned with Lebanon's democracy, why dont you take your camels and implement your own elections and stay out of Lebanese affairs?
09 June 2014, 10:03
21
Ft have the courage and use your regular username, oh I forget you are aounist who like aoun himself have no understanding of the concept btw hassan and his boy aoun, who promised the patriarch to attend, could've put the kingdom in it's place by attending the voting sessions and voting for a president but that requires courage unknown to both
09 June 2014, 10:46
42
Well Baabda still smells like his kabsa, so essentially, he's still President.
09 June 2014, 11:00
35
Free Patriotic Movement:
- what is free about these guys? they are just agents to hizbushaitan, and they execute their will.
- what is Patriotic about these guys? they execute the orders of iran! thus they are foreign agents.
- are they a movement? it is a group of people following aoun and his sons in law! they lost the support of what constituted a movement at the time.
so why would anyone elect aoun as a president? should any elections happen now, this fpm would not have half the MPs they have now.
09 June 2014, 12:37
22
Change the constitution, the Lebanese people have to choose a president not the Mp's; MP's choice is a compromise between criminals holding 4 million hostages.
09 June 2014, 12:46
34
That's weird, must be a Aounie syndrom.
Aoun feels like he's still in Baabda... oh he fled like a little girl (with just enough warning from his syrian brothers). Aoun always was and will remain a Syrian agent whatever his masquerade of fighting against syrians during the war. He was brought up like a Syrian puppy by Syrian intelligence services and is barking for Bashar today!
09 June 2014, 16:47
12
The situation is the same because HA and M8 stripped the presidency from all power and meaning and are still handicapping the country. This means that president or no president, the problem is not with the presidency but elsewhere.
And about your claim of "Paid distorters", look in the mirror.
09 June 2014, 13:22
24
Sure FT, Suleiman's decency, patriotism and honesty are hard to replace. It would be interesting to see who can truly fill his shoes. I mean no offence to you bro, but your friend Aoun hardly fits the bill, very far from that.
09 June 2014, 13:26
00
If I had a magic wand, I'd love to see this parliament full, then net them all, put them all in a ship and send to them all, far far away, in an island surrounded by great white sharks. Just because I am a nice guy, I'll put in that island some beautiful blondes, Cuban cigars, good brandy and lots of suntan oil, for their tongues. How about Christmas Islands?
09 June 2014, 15:01
00
You can take them where you like, but at the end of the day they were elected by us. Let's stop this blame game and start electing decent people to parliament not sons of leaders or mafiosos or sectarian pri...
09 June 2014, 16:07
20
FT, Christmas Island, Easter Island, any island, just let them go, w don't want them here anymore.
09 June 2014, 18:28
10
When Parliament, the electors of the President are all bought and paid for by foreign patrons, how can the product of their legislative duties, one being the election of the President, not also be the product of foreign interests.
To expect that these 128 could do a purely Lebanese act is to look for gold in a lead mine. It just ain't there.
To get a President made in Lebanon, the electors must be made in Lebanon as well.
