BEIRUT - Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri has set September 25 as the date for MPs to elect a new president for the country mired in political crisis, according to a newspaper interview published on Thursday. “I will call on September 25 for a session of parliament to elect the president, provided we have a two-thirds majority quorum,” or at least 86 members present in the 128-seat parliament, he told An-Nahar newspaper.President Emile Lahoud’s mandate was extended for three years in September 2004 under a controversial constitutional amendment passed with the support of Syria, which at the time was the key power-broker in Lebanon. The extension of the pro-Damascus Christian president’s term has been one of the major causes of a political crisis which has split Beirut into pro- and anti-Syrian camps.
While the anti-Syrian camp holds the majority in parliament, the opposition led by the Hezbollah party walked out of the Western-backed coalition cabinet of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora in November. Berri, who himself heads the pro-Syrian Amal party, has since refused
Only one candidate, Christian former general Michel Aoun, who has sided with the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, has so far come forward to run for president.
The opposition suspects the anti-Syrian camp will stay away to block the required quorum, in the absence of a consensus candidate as president, a post which is reserved for Maronite Christians under LebanonÂ’s confessional system.
| The Syrians and Hezbollah will do whatever it takes, and boom as many pols as necessary, to ensure that there is no election. |