The difficult journey to choose Lebanon's new president starts today
Beirut (AsiaNews) - Lebanon's lawmakers are not expected to agree on a candidate to replace President Michel Suleiman in today's vote. The latter's terms of office in Baabda Palace is set to end on 25 May.
None of the candidates running for office is expected to get the necessary two-thirds majority in the 128-seat parliament. Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces and candidate for the 14 March coalition, is expected to get at best 51 votes with Henri Helou, nominated by the leader of the National Struggle Front MP Walid Jumblatt, getting at most 16 votes. The remaining ballots are expected to be blank, mostly from members belonging to the 8 March coalition.
According to what is being said in parliament, none of the candidates running has a chance of getting the required majority, even when it will be 50+1 or 65 votes. This means that a "consensus" candidate agreed upon by the opposing sides will be necessary.
The former will inevitably be a Christian because, according to the 1943 National Pact, Lebanon's president must be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliamentary speaker a Shiite Muslim.
Hoping for an accord, Jumblatt presented Helou who, according to An Nahar sources, had not planned to run. The same applies to Robert Ghanem.
If, as expected, no one is elected today, the search for a "consensus" candidate for rival coalitions will start in earnest.
Today, Labour Minister Sejaan Qazzi announced that Kataeb Party chief Amin Gemayel would be a candidate in the second parliamentary session.
In this regard, the As Safir newspaper reported that Gemayel is the "obvious candidate for the second parliamentary session after Geagea fails to earn the required votes in the first round."
At the other end of the political spectrum, Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, an ally of Hizbollah, has repeatedly said he would not announce his candidacy if rival coalitions did not reach an agreement on him.
Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri said he wanted to see an agreement before calling a second session.
Al-Joumhouria wrote today that Berri said he was ready to call lawmakers to sit on Friday afternoon or even over the weekend if he felt that an agreement was possible, but that he would not do so if he saw opposing coalitions fail to agree on a common candidate.
Pressure from close (Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Iran and Syria on the other) and distant neighbours (the United States and France on the one side, and Russia on the other) have historically played a major role in the matter.
Still, L'Orient-Le Jour wrote today that although "we can already observe how the contours of the presidential vote [. . .] are in fact laid down," we must recognise that "for the first time since the end of civil war, political actors are seeking this time to give the impression that they want to 'play the game' and be less permeable to outside influence so as to ensure that finally the electoral process resembles more or less a democratic competition."
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