BEIRUT: The parliamentary Future bloc pleaded Tuesday with the March 8 coalition’s two rival presidential candidates to face off in Parliament at next month’s session to elect a president, saying it is the only way to end the 20-month-long vacuum and get paralyzed state institutions functioning.
Meanwhile, rival March 14 and March 8 leaders are scheduled to meet in a new round of national dialogue Wednesday, likely to focus on the presidential deadlock as well as efforts to reactivate the government, paralyzed for months by internal differences over the body’s decision-making mechanism.
However, it remains to be seen whether the two competing presidential candidates, MP Michel Aoun, whose candidacy was endorsed by Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea last week, and MP Sleiman Frangieh, who is backed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, will attend the dialogue session to be held at Speaker Nabih Berri’s residence in Ain al-Tineh.
Berri said the dialogue participants would continue talks on reactivating the government’s work. “The atmosphere is positive in this respect, particularly with regard to the approval of the Military Council’s appointments during the Cabinet session [Thursday],” Berri was quoted as saying by visitors at Ain al-Tineh.
Berri said he had been informed of “positive stances” by both Aoun and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil over the issue of military appointments.
“The Cabinet must hold its meetings and exercise its full powers, whether or not the presidential election is held within two weeks or is delayed,” Berri said. “The [work] of the Cabinet and Parliament should not be obstructed pending the election of a new president.”
Prime Minister Tammam Salam has called for a Cabinet session for Thursday despite an ongoing row among ministers over military appointments and the body’s decision-making system in the absence of a president. He said the 379 items on the agenda did not include any divisive issues. Ministers from the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah boycotted a Cabinet session on Jan. 14 because of the issue of military and security appointments, a key FPM demand, was not on the agenda. The Jan. 14 session was the first to be held since September, excluding an emergency meeting held last month over the six-month-long trash crisis.
Berri did not seem optimistic that a Parliament session he called for on Feb. 8 to elect a president would be better than the 34 previous ones that failed to convene over a lack of quorum.He said if a quorum of two-thirds of Parliament’s 128 members is secured, the session will be held. If a quorum is lacking, Berri said he will postpone the session as he has been doing for more than a year and a half.
Asked to comment on his previous remarks that Geagea’s endorsement of Aoun’s presidential bid was not sufficient to facilitate the election, Berri said what he meant was that the “LF-FPM consensus was not alone enough to elect a president, which requires a Christian and national consensus.”
The Future bloc praised the presence of more than one candidate running for the presidency, saying this bolstered the country’s democracy.
“All parliamentary blocs must attend the Feb. 8 session in Parliament to elect a president, which in itself constitutes the real gateway to end the state of obstruction and a return to reactivating the work of constitutional and other state institutions,” the bloc said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting. It renewed its call on Parliament “to end the presidential vacancy by quickly electing a president.”
“The presence of more than one candidate competing for the presidency post strengthens the image of democracy which must take place under the umbrella of the Constitution,” the statement said.
The bloc’s plea came a day after a similar call was made by Kataeb Party leader MP Sami Gemayel on Aoun and Frangieh to fight it out during the upcoming Parliament session to elect a president.
Gemayel said last week the Kataeb Party would not back any candidate with a “March 8 platform” for the presidency, in what amounted to an implicit rejection of Aoun and Frangieh’s bids.
The Future bloc also stressed the importance of “reactivating and energizing the government’s work to protect citizens’ interests and defend the livelihood of the Lebanese, which is in jeopardy due to the unjust policy of obstruction followed by Hezbollah and its ally, the Free Patriotic Movement.”
It also hoped that the upcoming Cabinet session would be “productive and effective.”
However, Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc linked its ministers’ participation in the Cabinet session to the issue of military appointments.
“The bloc’s stance is known on the Cabinet’s decision-making mechanism by consensus and [the issue of] security appointments, which has been discussed and agreed upon,” MP Ibrahim Kanaan, from the FPM, told reporters after the bloc’s weekly meeting chaired by Aoun at his residence in Rabieh, north of Beirut. “If the stances are translated into action, the bloc will participate in the [Cabinet] session.”
Kanaan also said the bloc has decided to contact various parliamentary blocs with the aim of shoring up the “inter-Christian agreement,” in a reference to last week’s Aoun-Geagea reconciliation during which the LF chief announced his support for the FPM founder’s presidential candidacy.
For his part, Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai called on lawmakers to elect either Aoun or Frangieh, or another candidate for the presidency. He said bringing together the four top Maronite leaders – Aoun, Geagea, Frangieh and former President Amine Gemayel – in Bkirki is useless.
“Lawmakers are required to go to Parliament and begin voting. They either elect one of the two known candidates [Aoun and Frangieh], or another one,” Rai told reporters at Beirut airport upon his return from a visit to the Vatican during which he met with Pope Francis. “A president cannot be elected if lawmakers don’t enter Parliament hall.”
