Hasan Lakkis| The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Parliament is scheduled to meet Wednesday to elect a new president amid signs that the session is destined to fail like previous ones over a lack of quorum, heralding a prolonged vacuum in the country’s top Christian post.
Ministerial sources said a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which wield great influence in Lebanon, held the key to breaking the 8-month-old presidential stalemate.
Wednesday’s session will be the 18th abortive attempt since April to choose a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure ended on May 25.
Lawmakers from MP Michel Aoun’s bloc, Hezbollah’s bloc and its March 8 allies have thwarted a quorum with their consistent boycott of Parliament sessions. They have demanded an agreement beforehand with their March 14 rivals over a consensus candidate for the presidency.
The presidential deadlock was believed to have been discussed during a meeting between Speaker Nabih Berri and MP Walid Jumblatt at the former’s residence in Ain al-Tineh. During the meeting attended also by Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil, a political aide to Berri, and Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, the two leaders reviewed the “current situation and developments,” the National News Agency reported.
During his short visit to Riyadh Monday to offer condolences over the death of Saudi King Abdullah, Aoun, accompanied by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, met with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Hariri and Aoun discussed local developments, Al-Jadeed TV station said, without giving further details.
The Parliament session comes as foreign envoys who are interested in the Lebanese presidential election, particularly French presidential envoy Jean-Francois Girault, have suspended their political activity for now.
Parliamentary sources in the March 8 and March 14 camps said that the flurry of political activity by international envoys has been replaced by internal dialogue, namely between the Future Movement and Hezbollah, which is aimed at defusing sectarian tensions, and the dialogue between the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces designed to arrange a meeting between the FPM leader Aoun and LF chief Samir Geagea to resolve the presidential crisis.
But such a meeting could not be held unless Aoun won a firm pledge from Geagea to back him for president in exchange for the FPM leader’s readiness to meet the LF chief’s possible conditions in this respect, the sources said.
However, ministerial sources said an improvement in Saudi-Iranian relations, strained by regional conflicts, mainly the war in Syria, was essential to help break the presidential deadlock.
But the possibility of Riyadh and Tehran meeting to discuss divisive issues in the region, including the Lebanese presidential election, is not favorable now, the sources said.
Therefore, the sources added, Lebanon must wait to find out the prospects of the Saudi-Iranian ties in light of the results of the ongoing negotiations between Iran and Western powers over its nuclear program.
According to the sources, Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s “government of national interest,” formed to manage the presidential vacuum crisis, is functioning properly and doing its job to the fullest.
The Cabinet is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss 51 items on its agenda, including a draft decree calling for raising the number of Internal Security Forces from 29,000 to 40,000.
Meanwhile, Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, in his first public appearance since undergoing brain surgery last week, expressed hope that dialogue between rival factions would lead to the election of a president.
“We are at the end of the eighth month of the presidential vacuum, in addition to paralysis in Parliament and the government’s failure to exercise the president’s powers according to Article 62 in the Constitution,” Rai told a meeting of Catholic patriarchs held in Bkirki.
“Strenuous efforts should be made by the relevant parties [MPs] and decision-makers to quickly elect a president. We hope the ongoing dialogue among the conflicting political parties will help in this solution.”