A meeting of the Lebanese Parliament on Sept. 26, 2022 in Beirut. (Credit: Ali Fawaz/Lebanese Parliament/Flickr)
BEIRUT — Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri set a session to elect a new president for Thursday at 11 a.m., a Parliament spokesperson told L’Orient Today.
The session was scheduled despite there being no consensus yet on a candidate, though negotiations are underway. Among these discussions, the 13 Forces of Change MPs have met with all parliamentary blocs in an effort to agree on presidential candidates. But no names have been leaked so far. The MPs had threatened to take to the streets if a president is not elected by Oct. 21, 10 days before the constitutional deadline to do so.
For his part, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said earlier this month he was open to a consensus on a name "far from the political vetoes." Two of his allies, Sleiman Frangieh, leader of the Marada movement, and Gebran Bassil, head of the Free Patriotic Movement, are considered by observers to be "natural" candidates, due to their status as Maronite leaders.
Opposite Frangieh and Bassil is Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, who is also considered a "natural" candidate for the position.
Various other figures have officially announced their candidacy, including economist Ziad Hayek, former ambassador Tracy Chamoun, and Lebanese-American writer and development expert May Rihani. Army commander-in-chief General Joseph Aoun's name has also been the subject of discussion, though his candidacy would require a constitutional amendment, as military officers must be retired or have officially resigned from office six months before an election.
According to the constitution, specifically Article 49, the president is elected by Parliament. The president may be chosen in the first round of voting if they gather the support of two-thirds of MPs (86 out of the current 128), as the constitution encourages consensus. If not, the president can be elected in the subsequent rounds with an absolute majority of 65 votes.
Though the president has always been a Maronite Christian — with one exception in the 1920s and 30s — the constitution does not state that the position is reserved for a specific religious group. Rather, this precedent was reached via an informal agreement known as the National Pact in 1943. Under the agreement, the president is a Maronite, the prime mister a Sunni and the parliament speaker a Shiite.
The international community has for several weeks been pressing for the election of a new president, in parallel with the numerous reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund to release financial aid.
Berri said at the end of July that he would not "convene a session to elect a president of the republic until the reform laws requested by the International Monetary Fund are adopted.”
Parliament approved the 2022 budget — one of the reforms Lebanon must enact in order to receive an IMF aid package — with a 63-vote majority Monday night.
Observers have feared a total political vacancy at the executive level if a new president is not elected by the constitutionally set Oct. 31 deadline, as a new cabinet has also not been formed since parliamentary elections in May. Instead, the previous cabinet has been serving in a caretaker capacity in the meantime.