NewsMiddle EastThe UN coordinator for Lebanon urges the parties to work to appoint a new president

The UN coordinator for Lebanon urges the parties to work to appoint a new president

Archive – United Nations coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka. – LI MUZI / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO – Archive

The coordinator for Lebanon of the United Nations, Joanna Wronecka, has urged on Monday the parties to work together for the election of a new president in the framework of the absolute political paralysis that dominates the country, with a government resigned since May and fragmented by infighting.

In a meeting with the interim prime minister Nayib Mikati, which he has described as “constructive”, Wronecka has conveyed to him the need to elect a new president “without further delay”, as well as to form a “fully functional” government and implement reforms to take put Lebanon on the road to recovery”.

Wronecka, who has reported this meeting on his official Twitter profile, has also met with Mohamed Raad, a Hezbollah deputy, to whom he has conveyed “the serious risks of a political stalemate in Lebanon”.

Lebanese deputies failed on Thursday, for the ninth time in less than a month and a half, in the vote in Parliament to elect the successor to Michel Aoun as head of the country’s Presidency. In the first round, the president must be elected with 86 votes, while in successive rounds an absolute majority of 65 votes is required.

Members of the Free Patriotic Movement of Aoun and the Shiite Amal-Hezbollah tandem voted blank, then walked out of session after the first round of voting, thus losing the quorum needed to proceed with a new round.

The elections, considered key to the future of the country, consecrated two great winners: the Lebanese Forces, which became the first Christian party in the Assembly with 19 deputies, and the protest movements against the crisis. By contrast, the Shiite militia party Hezbollah and its allies, including the Aoun Free Patriotic Movement, lost their majority in parliament.

Aoun was elected president in 2016 after almost fifty parliamentary sessions that lasted for two and a half years. After his departure, he left a power vacuum that lasted indefinitely due to the inability of the political forces to agree on a successor.

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