Report: FPM Suggests Total Vacuum to Resolve Presidential Deadlock
The Free Patriotic Movement of MP Michel Aoun has proposed to the Maronite church a vacuum in the government and parliament to pressure lawmakers into electing a new president, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.
Al-Akhbar quoted Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil as telling Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi that neither Sunni nor Shiite officials were eager to hold the elections on time.
Bassil is a top FPM official and Aoun's son-in-law.
Speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite, has stressed on several occasions that the parliament could exercise its legislative authorities whether a president was elected or not, Bassil allegedly told al-Rahi during a meeting they held in Bkriki last week.
Sunni Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is the leader of al-Mustaqbal movement, is also unenthusiastic about the elections, Bassil said.
These stances led to the proposal to have a vacuum at parliament and in the government to paralyze the country and then exert internal and external pressure for the quick election of a president, al-Akhbar said.
But according to the newspaper, al-Rahi categorically rejected the idea, saying the paralysis would hit the country’s stability.
The patriarch stressed that the election of a president and his continued presence gives legitimacy to the state's institutions.
In his Sunday sermon, al-Rahi blamed a possible presidential vacuum on “those who are seeking it and those who might cause it.”
Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and the rest of the March 8 camp's lawmakers, except for Berri's bloc, have been boycotting the elections over lack of consensus on a president.
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