Phalange Party leader MP Sami Gemayel on Friday blasted Speaker Nabih Berri over calling for dialogue sessions at the parliament prior to the election of a president.
“The proposal to hold successive sessions to elect a president on the condition that we participate in dialogue is an acknowledgment that you were deliberately violating the constitution and that all the excuses that you were using are invalid,” Gemayel said
“The implementation of the constitution is not a political blackmail card. Parliament in not your property; it belongs to the Lebanese people,” Gemayel added.
Similarly MP Sethrida Geagea of the Lebanese Forces parliamentary bloc on Friday blasted Speaker Nabih Berri for “insisting that he will not call for a presidential election session unless there is a prior agreement.”
Geagea called on Berri to “immediately call for an open-ended session with successive rounds as per the constitution, in order to elect a president for the country because there is no solution of the vacuum crisis other than this solution.”
Gemayel’s comments come after Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri called Thursday on the heads of parliamentary blocs and political parties to participate in a seven-day dialogue at the parliament in September to set the stage for open-ended sessions to elect a president.
Berri was speaking at an event organized by this Amal Movement to mark the 45th anniversary of the disappearance of Imam Moussa Sadr during a visit to Libya in 1978.
Berri claimed that he was working to ensure the presidential elections were held very soon.
Lebanon has been without a president since the end of October 2023 when Michel Aoun’s term expired .
The parliament failed in 12 sessions to elect a president , primarily because of the lack of a qurom.
Berri a staunch ally of Hezbollah blocked the qurom following every session by making sure that all his allies leave the parliament after the first round.
According to the Lebanese constitution if no candidate secures two-third of the parliamentary vote in the first round the parliament should remain in session until the candidate that secures a simple majority of half plus one of the votes gets elected .
Hezbollah , whose candidate is Suleiman Franjieh, a close friend of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad has with some help from Berri and the French leadership been trying to get his candidate elected . During the last session Franjieh secured 51 votes in the first round while the opposition’s candidate Jihad Azour , a former minister and the head of the IMF in the middle East seured 60 votes but one of his votes went missing . Reports suggested that Berri was behind the missing vote.
News Agencies
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