A giant portrait of Amal Movement leader and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is displayed at the commemoration of the passing of Amal founder Imam Moussa Sadr on Aug. 31, 2023. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
Lebanon's Parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, once again emphasized the importance of the initiative he launched a year ago to put an end to the presidential vacancy in Lebanon, reiterating the need to hold parliamentary consultations in order to reach consensus on the election of a head of state.
Lebanon has been without a president since the end of Michel Aoun's term in October 2022. Internal political dissension continues to prevent the election of his successor.
“The call to elect a president is still valid, especially as Lebanon urgently needs a head of state,” Berri said in an interview published Saturday by the daily newspaper al-Joumhouria. “Nothing prevents the election of a president, the circumstances we are going through require it,” he added.
According to Berri, “the process for electing a president is well known.”
“I have already defined it on several occasions,” he continued, recalling that it involves the trilogy of "consultations, consensus and then election," an initiative he launched in August 2023 and which provides for a week of dialogue between the different political groups, followed by "open sessions" in Parliament with successive rounds of voting.
'The opportunity presents itself again'
“We've had many opportunities to elect a president, but we haven't taken advantage of them,” Berry said, adding that "the opportunity to do so still presents itself."
“If they had listened to me, we would already have elected a president,” he added, lamenting that the failure of MPs to respond to his call "has prolonged the presidential vacancy."
Berri, who is also head of the Amal Movement, also welcomed the one-year extension of the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) until Aug. 31, 2025, voted unanimously by the UN Security Council on Wednesday, as deadly fighting between Hezbollah and Israel continues on the Lebanese-Israeli border in the wake of the Gaza war.
This article was originally published in French on L'Orient-Le Jour.
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