President Michel Suleiman called on MPs to attend the April 23rd Parliament session to ensure quorum is achieved in order to elect a new Lebanese president.
“They have no right to disrupt the quorum unless there are extremely compelling circumstances, which do not exist today at all,” Suleiman told Abjad News website in an interview published Wednesday.
Suleiman also stressed that “political vacuum is not allowed at all and it is unacceptable that we reach it.”
“I do not want to stay three more years. As I have always been saying, I am an advocate of the rotation of power.”
The president advised his successor to “favor national interest over all other interests, and to commit to his oath during all circumstances.”
This development comes after Speaker Nabih Berri called on the parliament to meet on April 23 to vote for a successor to Suleiman, whose term ends on May 25.
The meeting next Wednesday is expected to be the first in several attempts to elect a president before President Michel Suleiman’s six-year term expires.
A new Lebanese president faces massive security and economic challenges, most of them related to the spillover from the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.
The country’s leaders are deeply split along sectarian and ideological lines. Failure to agree on a consensus president could make things harder for the government at a crucial time while it struggles with sectarian violence and an influx of over a million Syrian refugees.
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