Deputy speaker election: Joumblatt recognizes 'defeat of the new majority in Parliament'

BEIRUT — Walid Joumblatt, the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, blamed the new parliamentary majority’s “defeat” in electing a deputy speaker on “inept coordination,” after MP Elias Bou Saab of the Free Patriotic Movement won in the second round of voting against independent MP Ghassan Skaff. Skaff had said he expected to garner support from the Lebanese Forces, PSP and the Kataeb Party in his effort to be elected deputy speaker on Tuesday at Lebanon’s newly elected Parliament’s first session.

Here’s what we know:

    • During the session, the legislature also re-elected Nabih Berri as speaker of Parliament for a seventh consecutive term, this clocking up a victory for Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, which are opposed by the newly elected opposition group MPs as well as several traditional parties.

    • “After yesterday's defeat of the new majority in Parliament in the election of the deputy speaker, as a result of inept coordination, it would be better to develop a common program which transcends secondary contradictions,” Jumblatt tweeted Wednesday morning. Such a program must be found, according to him, “to face the Syrian-Iranian March 8 camp which, as a reminder, will avenge its defeat in the [parliamentary] elections using all means and sparing no one.”

    • Hezbollah and its political allies, including Amal, lost their majority in Parliament after the May 15 legislative elections. Nonetheless, the two Shiite parties won all 27 seats reserved for their sect, which favored the election of its allies during yesterday’s session.

    • The Maronite MP for Jbeil, Ziad Hawat, allied with the LF of Samir Geagea, told Annahar newspaper that the results of the votes Tuesday “were expected because of the dispersion of the opposition forces and the presence of a controlling conductor from the other camp.” Hawat lost the election as Maronite secretary of Parliament to the FPM’s candidate Alain Aoun, who garnered 65 votes. “We failed to find a united roadmap for the opposition forces,” Hawat said.