No President in Sight as Vacuum Enters 3rd Week
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.
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