Lebanese lawmakers fail in yet another attempt to elect president, end power vacuum

BEIRUT — Lebanese lawmakers failed Wednesday in yet another attempt to elect a president and break a seven-month power vacuum that has roiled the tiny Mediterranean country. The ongoing political chaos has blocked progress on a solution to an intensifying economic crisis.

The session — the twelfth try to pick a president — broke down after the bloc led by the powerful political party and militant group Hezbollah withdrew following the first round of voting, breaking the quorum in the 128-member house. All lawmakers attended the session.

Hezbollah's preferred candidate, Sleiman Frangieh, the scion of a political family close to the ruling Assad family in Syria, trailed behind his main rival, Jihad Azour, a former finance minister and senior official with the International Monetary Fund, in the first round of voting.

Azour, who is supported by the opposition to Hezbollah and some of its nominal allies, received 59 votes to 51 for Frangieh, while 18 lawmakers cast blank ballots, protest votes or voted for minority candidates. However, Azour failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to win in the first round.

The meeting came after 11 previous sessions by the parliament — the last of which was held in January — failed to elect a replacement for President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, whose term ended in late October.

Azour has the backing of the country’s largest Christian political parties, the Free Patriotic Movement, which has been allied with Hezbollah since 2006, and the Lebanese Forces party, an opponent to Hezbollah.

After the session broke down, Azour thanked those who voted for him and said he hoped everyone would rally behind a call "to get Lebanon out of the crisis” next time.

Under Lebanon’s complex power-sharing agreement, the country's president has to be a Maronite Christian, the parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim and the prime minister a Sunni.

Azour is also backed by the majority of Druze legislators and some Sunni Muslims, while Shiite members of parliament have overwhelmingly backed Frangieh.

The new president’s most pressing task will be to get this nation of 6 million people, including more than 1 million Syrian refugees, out of an unprecedented economic crisis that began in October 2019. The meltdown is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the country’s political class that has ruled Lebanon since the 1975-90 civil war ended.

Clinching a bailout deal with the IMF — Azour’s current employer — is seen as key to Lebanon's recovery. Azour took a leave of absence from his post as regional director for the organization upon announcing his candidacy.

Azour's supporters accused Hezbollah and its allies of blocking the democratic process.

“This group does not believe in democracy," said Fadi Karam, lawmaker from Lebanese Forces. Independent lawmaker Waddah Sadek said that “nobody can nominate a candidate and say it’s either them or nobody else.”

Hezbollah has often criticized opposing candidates as divisive and “confrontational," though Azour has said that he would work to bring together rival political groups and end the economic crisis.

“Who better than Jihad Azour to seal the deal with the IMF that can help guarantee us international investment,” Sadek said.

Hezbollah lawmaker Hussein Haj Hassan claimed Azour and those around him had no political program and called for a “real national dialogue away from the auctioneering and intimidation.”

Harsh Hezbollah critic Ashraf Rifi described the vote as “a confrontation between the state and the statelet” — a reference to Hezbollah's widespread influence in the country.

Earlier this week, Frangieh said he was not imposing himself but sought "a national consensus or majority.”

Not all lawmakers opposed to Hezbollah support Azour's candidacy and some see him as representing sectarian parties. Ibrahim Mneimneh said the one thing that many legislators who like him ran on anti-establishment platforms agree on was their opposition to Frangieh.

Michel Douaihy, another independent lawmaker, said Azour had not been the first choice of most independents, but that his candidacy "is the art of compromise at its best.”

No date has been set for a thirteenth attempt to elect a president.