Beirut: As expected, Lebanon’s parliamentarians failed to form a quorum on Thursday, which meant that the fifth round of a scheduled vote to elect a new President of the Republic was postponed yet again. Neither of the two officially declared candidates, Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces and still the designated candidate of the March 14 alliance, or Henri Helou, the Progressive Socialist Party entrant, could thus win. General Michel Aoun, the chief of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and presumed March 8 contender, was not elected either. In fact, Aoun and the bulk of the March 8 coalition boycotted Thursday’s session allegedly because they could not ensure his successful bid and would, therefore, not even bother to show-up.
On Sunday May 25, the day when President Michel Sulaiman’s term ends, Lebanon will thus enter into a period of leadership vacuum, which would probably require both a fresh domestic entente as well as foreign efforts to bring various factions together. March 8 deputies led by Michel Aoun insisted on a consensual candidate before they would participate in the election of a new head-of-state, with Aoun apparently still waiting for a green light from former Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri who, allegedly, toyed with the idea of committing the Future Movement to his favour. Although nothing presaged such an outcome as of Thursday afternoon, Speaker Nabih Berri informed all those concerned that parliament would convene as soon as a quorum could be met, which some observers believed would occur early next week while others foresaw a long delay stretching until at least September.
Fears that the imminent vacuum at the Ba’abda Presidential Palace would affect Lebanon’s power-sharing system — under which the head of state must be a Christian Maronite, the Speaker a Shiite and the Prime Minister a Sunni — prompted the Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Mar Beshara Al Ra‘i to plead for an election that would “avert dangers,” although none of the March 8 Christian deputies heeded his message.
Deputy Alain Aoun announced that the FPM would issue a statement on Monday on the best ways to deal with the next stage, blaming March 14 members for rejecting the Michel Aoun consensual candidacy.
On April 23, 2014, Geagea received the votes of 48 MPs in the first round of the elections, while Henri Helou secured 16 votes, with the bulk of March 8 deputies casting 52 blank ballots to protest Geagea’s candidacy. Without a two-thirds quorum of 86 parliamentarians, however, it was difficult to foresee how members could hold a fresh session when one of the parties insisted on a pre-determined agreement on his contention. Although the Speaker remained optimistic that “parliament sessions would remain open until the end of the president’s term,” no quorum essentially translated into no president.
On Wednesday, the outgoing head-of-state forwarded a letter to Parliament that lamented its members’ failures to choose a successor, cautioning that the ill-advised boycotts “created fear among the people and increased concern for the future.” Sulaiman was taken to task by Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement lawmakers as they concluded the letter targeted them. Nicholas Fattoush, an FPM deputy, lashed out against the president, declaring that the letter “was not an appropriate means to deal with Parliament.”
In the event, and following a meeting with Cardinal Ra‘i, Geagea called on Michel Aoun to participate in the vote “and if he receives two-thirds majority, then I will be the first to congratulate him.” The Cardinal added his own rejoinder: “shame on us all [for our] abject failure.”
